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HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &   COMPANY, 

BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK. 


THE 


OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 


BY 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL 


BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

(arfoe  ftitoersi&e  l^ress,  (Cambridge 

1893 


Copyright,  1892, 
BY  CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 


NOTE 

IN  the  spring  of  1887,  Mr.  Lowell  read,  at  the 
Lowell  Institute  in  Boston,  six  lectures  on  the  Old 
English  Dramatists.  They  had  been  rapidly  writ- 
ten, and  in  their  delivery  much  was  said  extempo- 
raneously, suggested  by  the  passages  from  the  plays 
selected  for  illustration  of  the  discourse.  To  many 
of  these  passages  there  was  no  reference  in  the 
manuscript ;  they  were  read  from  the  printed  book. 
The  lectures  were  never  revised  by  Mr.  Lowell  for 
publication,  but  they  contain  such  admirable  and 
interesting  criticism,  and  are  in  themselves  such 
genuine  pieces  of  good  literature,  that  it  has  seemed 
to  me  that  they  should  be  given  to  the  public.1 

CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON. 

1  Before  their  publication  in  this  volume,  these  Lectures  ap- 
peared in  Harper's  Magazine,  in  the  numbers  from  June  to  No- 
vember, 1892. 


CONTENTS. 


PAOB 


I.  INTRODUCTORY 1 

II.  MARLOWE 28 

III.  WEBSTER 55 

IV.  CHAPMAN 73 

V.  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER 100 

VI.  MASSINGEH  AND  FORD       ....  113 


THE   OLD   ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 


INTRODUCTORY 

WHEN  the  rule  limiting  speeches  to  an  hour  was 
adopted  by  Congress,  which  was  before  most  of 
you  were  born,  an  eminent  but  somewhat  discur- 
sive person  spent  more  than  that  measure  of  time 
in  convincing  me  that  whoever  really  had  anything 
to  say  could  say  it  in  less.  I  then  and  there  ac- 
quired a  conviction  of  this  truth,  which  has  only 
strengthened  with  years.  Yet  whoever  undertakes 
to  lecture  must  adapt  his  discourse  to  the  law  which 
requires  such  exercises  to  be  precisely  sixty  minutes 
long,  just  as  a  certain  standard  of  inches  must  be 
reached  by  one  who  would  enter  the  army.  If  one 
has  been  studying  all  his  life  how  to  be  terse,  how 
to  suggest  rather  than  to  expound,  how  to  contract 
rather  than  to  dilate,  something  like  a  strain  is  put 
upon  the  conscience  by  this  necessity  of  giving  the 
full  measure  of  words,  without  reference  to  other 
considerations  which  a  judicious  ear  may  esteem  of 
more  importance.  Instead  of  saying  things  com- 
pactly and  pithily,  so  that  they  may  be  easily  car- 
ried away,  one  is  tempted  into  a  certain  generosity 
and  circumambience  of  phrase,  which,  if  not  adapted 


2  THE   OLD   ENGLISH   DRAMATISTS 

to  conquer  Time,  may  at  least  compel  him  to  turn 
his  glass  and  admit  a  drawn  game.  It  is  so  much 
harder  to  fill  an  hour  than  to  empty  one  ! 

These  thoughts  rose  before  me  with  painful  viv- 
idness as  I  fancied  myself  standing  here  again,  after 
an  interval  of  thirty-two  years,  to  address  an  audi- 
ence at  the  Lowell  Institute.  Then  I  lectured,  not 
without  some  favorable  acceptance,  on  Poetry  in 
general  and  what  constituted  it,  on  Imagination 
and  Fancy,  on  Wit  and  Humor,  on  Metrical  Ro- 
mances, on  Ballads,  and  I  know  not  what  else  — 
on  whatever  I  thought  I  had  anything  to  say  about, 
I  suppose.  Then  I  was  at  the  period  in  life  when 
thoughts  rose  in  coveys,  and  one  filled  one's  bag 
without  considering  too  nicely  whether  the  game 
had  been  hatched  within  his  neighbor's  fence  or 
within  his  own,  —  a  period  of  life  when  it  does  n't 
seem  as  if  everything  had  been  said  ;  when  a  man 
overestimates  the  value  of  what  specially  interests 
himself,  and  insists  with  Don  Quixote  that  all 
the  world  shall  stop  till  the  superior  charms  of  his 
Dulcinea  of  the  moment  have  been  acknowledged  ; 
when  he  conceives  himself  a  missionary,  and  is  per- 
suaded that  he  is  saving  his  fellows  from  the  perdi- 
tion of  their  soids  if  he  convert  them  from  belief  in 
some  gesthetic  heresy.  That  is  the  mood  of  mind 
in  which  one  may  read  lectures  with  some  assurance 
of  success.  I  remember  how  I  read  mine  over 
to  the  clock,  that  I  might  be  sure  I  had  enough, 
and  how  patiently  the  clock  listened,  and  gave  no 
opinion  except  as  to  duration,  on  which  point  it 
assured  me  that  I  always  ran  over.  This  is  the 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS          3 

pleasant  peril  of  enthusiasm,  which  has  always 
something  of  the  careless  superfluity  of  youth. 
Since  then,  and  for  a  period  making  a  sixth  part 
of  my  mature  life,  my  mind  has  been  shunted  off 
upon  the  track  of  other  duties  and  other  interests. 
If  I  have  learned  something,  I  have  also  forgotten 
a  good  deal.  One  is  apt  to  forget  so  much  in  the 
service  of  one's  country,  —  even  that  he  is  an 
American,  I  have  been  told,  though  I  can  hardly 
believe  it. 

When  I  selected  my  topic  for  this  new  venture, 
I  was  returning  to  a  first  love.  The  second  volume 
I  ever  printed,  in  1843,  I  think  it  was,  —  it  is  now 
a  rare  book,  I  am  not  sorry  to  know  ;  I  have  not 
seen  it  for  many  years,  —  was  mainly  about  the 
Old  English  Dramatists,  if  I  am  not  mistaken.  I 
dare  say  it  was  crude  enough,  but  it  was  sponta- 
neous and  honest.  I  have  continued  to  read  them 
ever  since,  with  no  less  pleasure,  if  with  more  dis- 
crimination. But  when  I  was  confronted  with  the 
question  what  I  could  say  of  them  that  would  in- 
terest any  rational  person,  after  all  that  had  been 
said  by  Lamb,  the  most  sympathetic  of  critics, 
by  Hazlitt,  one  of  the  most  penetrative,  by  Cole- 
ridge, the  most  intuitive,  and  by  so  many  others, 
I  was  inclined  to  believe  that  instead  of  an  easy 
subject  I  had  chosen  a  subject  very  far  from  easy. 
But  I  sustained  myself  with  the  words  of  the 
great  poet  who  so  often  has  saved  me  from  my- 
self:— 

u  Vagliami  51  lungo  studio  e  il  grande  amore, 
Che  m'  ha  fatto  cercar  lo  tuo  volume." 


4  THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

If  I  bring  no  other  qualification,  I  bring  at  least 
that  of  hearty  affection,  which  is  the  first  condition 
of  insight.  I  shall  not  scruple  to  repeat  what  may 
seem  already  too  familiar,  confident  that  these  old 
poets  will  stand  as  much  talking  about  as  most  peo- 
ple. At  the  risk  of  being  tedious,  I  shall  put  you 
back  to  your  scales  as  a  teacher  of  music  does  his 
pupils.  For  it  is  the  business  of  a  lecturer  to  treat 
his  audience  as  M.  Jourdain  wished  to  be  treated 
in  respect  of  the  Latin  language,  —  to  take  it  for 
granted  that  they  know,  but  to  talk  to  them  as  if 
they  did  n't.  I  should  have  preferred  to  entitle  my 
course  Readings  from  the  Old  English  Dramatists 
with  illustrative  comments,  rather  than  a  critical 
discussion  of  them,  for  there  is  more  conviction  in 
what  is  beautiful  in  itself  than  in  any  amount  of 
explanation  why,  or  exposition  of  how,  it  is  beauti- 
ful. A  rose  has  a  very  succinct  way  of  explaining 
itself.  When  I  find  nothing  profitable  to  say,  I 
shall  take  sanctuary  in  my  authors. 

It  is  generally  assumed  that  the  Modern  Drama 
in  France,  Spain,  Italy,  and  England  was  an  evo- 
lution out  of  the  Mysteries  and  Moralities  and  In- 
terludes which  had  edified  and  amused  preceding 
generations  of  simpler  taste  and  ruder  intelligence. 
'T  is  the  old  story  of  Thespis  and  his  cart.  Taken 
with  due  limitations,  and  substituting  the  word 
stage  for  drama,  this  theory  of  origin  is  satisfactory 
enough.  The  stage  was  there,  and  the  desire  to  be 
amused,  when  the  drama  at  last  appeared  to  occupy 
the  one  and  to  satisfy  the  other.  It  seems  to  have 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS  5 

been,  so  far  as  the  English  Drama  is  concerned, 
a  case  of  post  hoc,  without  altogether  adequate 
grounds  for  inferring  apropter  hoc.  The  Interludes 
may  have  served  as  training-schools  for  actors.  It 
is  certain  that  Richard  Burbage,  afterwards  of 
Shakespeare's  company,  was  so  trained.  He  is  the 
actor,  you  will  remember,  who  first  played  the  part 
of  Hamlet,  and  the  untimely  expansion  of  whose 
person  is  supposed  to  account  for  the  Queen's 
speech  in  the  fencing  scene,  "  He 's  fat  and  scant 
of  breath."  I  may  say,  in  passing,  that  the  phrase 
merely  means  "  He  's  out  of  training,"  as  we  should 
say  now.  A  fat  Hamlet  is  as  inconceivable  as  a 
lean  Falstaff.  Shakespeare,  with  his  usual  discre- 
tion, never  makes  the  Queen  hateful,  and  made 
use  of  this  expedient  to  show  her  solicitude  for 
her  son.  Her  last  word,  as  she  is  dying,  is  his 
name. 

To  return.  The  Interlude  may  have  kept  alive 
the  traditions  of  a  stage,  and  may  have  made  ready 
a  certain  number  of  persons  to  assume  higher  and 
graver  parts  when  the  opportunity  should  come; 
but  the  revival  of  learning,  and  the  rise  of  cities 
capable  of  supplying  a  more  cultivated  and  exact- 
ing audience,  must  have  had  a  stronger  and  more 
direct  influence  on  the  growth  of  the  Drama,  as  we 
understand  the  word,  than  any  or  all  other  influ- 
ences combined.  Certainly  this  seems  to  me  true 
of  the  English  Drama  at  least.  The  English  Mir- 
acle Plays  are  dull  beyond  what  is  permitted  even 
by  the  most  hardened  charity,  and  there  is  nothing 
dramatic  in  them  except  that  they  are  in  the  form  of 


6  THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

dialogue.  The  Interludes  are  perhaps  further  sad- 
dened in  the  reading  by  reminding  us  how  much 
easier  it  was  to  be  amused  three  hundred  years  ago 
than  now,  but  their  wit  is  the  wit  of  the  Eocene 
period,  unhappily  as  long  as  it  is  broad,  and  their 
humor  is  horse-play.  We  inherited  a  vast  accumu- 
lation of  barbarism  from  our  Teutonic  ancestors. 
It  was  only  on  those  terms,  perhaps,  that  we  could 
have  their  vigor  too.  The  Interludes  have  some 
small  value  as  illustrating  manners  and  forms  of 
speech,  but  the  man  must  be  born  expressly  for 
the  purpose  —  as  for  some  of  the  adventures  of 
mediaeval  knight-errantry  —  who  can  read  them. 
"  Gammer  Gurton's  Needle  "  is  perhaps  as  good  as 
any.  It  was  acted  at  Christ's  College,  Cambridge, 
in  1566,  and  is  remarkable,  as  Mr.  Collier  pointed 
out,  as  the  first  existing  play  acted  before  either 
University.  Its  author  was  John  Still,  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells,  and  it  is  curious  that 
when  Vice-Chancellor  of  Cambridge  he  should  have 
protested  against  the  acting  before  the  University 
of  an  English  play  so  unbefitting  its  learning,  dig- 
nity, and  character.  "  Gammer  Gurton's  Needle  " 
contains  a  very  jolly  and  spirited  song  in  praise  of 
ale.  Latin  plays  were  acted  before  the  Universities 
on  great  occasions,  but  there  was  nothing  dramatic 
about  them  but  their  form.  One  of  them  by  Bur- 
ton, author  of  the  "  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,"  has 
been  printed,  and  is  not  without  merit.  In  the 
"  Pardoner  and  the  Frere  "  there  is  a  hint  at  the 
drollery  of  those  cross-readings  with  which  Bonnell 
Thornton  made  our  grandfathers  laiTgh  :  — 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS  7 

"  Pard.     Pope  July  the  Sixth  hath  granted  fair  and  well  — 

Fr.     That  when  to  them  God  hath  abundance  sent  — 

Pard.    And  doth  twelve  thousand  years  of  pardon  to  them  send  — 

Fr.     They  would  distribute  none  to  the  indigent  — 

Pard.     That  aught  to  this  holy  chapel  lend." 

Everything  in  these  old  farces  is  rudimentary. 
They  are  not  merely  coarse ;  they  are  vulgar. 

In  France  it  was  better,  but  France  had  some- 
thing which  may  fairly  be  called  literature  before 
any  other  country  in  Europe,  not  literature  in  the 
highest  sense,  of  course,  but  something,  at  any 
rate,  that  may  be  still  read  with  pleasure  for  its 
delicate  beauty,  like  "  Aucassin  and  Nicolete,"  or 
for  its  downright  vigor,  like  the  "  Song  of  Roland," 
or  for  its  genuine  humor,  like  "  Renard  the  Fox." 
There  is  even  one  French  Miracle  Play  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  by  the  trouvere  Rutebeuf ,  based  on 
the  legend  of  Theophilus  of  Antioch,  which  might 
be  said  to  contain  the  germ  of  Calderon's  "  El  Ma- 
gico  Prodigioso,"  and  thus,  remotely,  of  Goethe's 
"  Faust."  Of  the  next  century  is  the  farce  of  "  Pate- 
lin,"  which  has  given  a  new  word  with  its  several 
derivatives  to  the  French  language,  and  a  prover- 
bial phrase,  revenons  a  nos  moutons,  that  long  ago 
domiciled  itself  beyond  the  boundaries  of  France. 
"  Patelin  "  rises  at  times  above  the  level  of  farce, 
though  hardly  to  the  region  of  pure  comedy.  I  saw 
it  acted  at  the  Theatre  Francais  many  years  ago, 
with  only  so  much  modernization  of  language  as 
was  necessary  to  make  it  easily  comprehensible, 
and  found  it  far  more  than  archseologically  enter- 
taining. Surely  none  of  our  old  English  Interludes 


8  THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

could  be  put  upon  the  stage  now  without  the 
gloomiest  results.  They  were  not,  in  my  judgment, 
the  direct,  and  hardly  even  the  collateral,  ancestors 
of  our  legitimate  comedy.  On  the  other  hand, 
while  the  Miracle  Plays  left  no  traces  of  themselves 
in  our  serious  drama,  the  play  of  Punch  and  Judy 
looks  very  like  an  impoverished  descendant  of 
theirs. 

In  Spain  it  wao  otherwise.  There  the  old  Mo- 
ralities and  Mysteries  of  the  Church  Festivals  are 
renewed  and  perpetuated  in  the  Autos  Sacramen- 
tales  of  Calderon,  but  ensouled  with  the  creative 
breath  of  his  genius,  and  having  a  strange  phan- 
tasmal reality  in  the  ideal  world  of  his  wonder- 
working imagination.  One  of  his  plays,  "  La  Devo- 
cion  de  la  Cruz,"  an  Auto  in  spirit  if  not  in  form, 
dramatizes,  as  only  he  could  do  it,  the  doctrine  of 
justification  by  faith.  In  Spain,  too,  the  comedy 
of  the  booth  and  the  plaza  is  plainly  the  rude 
sketch  of  the  higher  creations  of  Tirso  and  Lope 
and  Calderon  and  Rojas  and  Alarcon,  and  scores 
of  others  only  less  than  they.  The  tragicomedy  of 
"  Celestina,"  written  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, is  the  first  modern  piece  of  realism  or  natural- 
ism, as  it  is  called,  with  which  I  am  acquainted.  It 
is  coarse,  and  most  of  the  characters  are  low,  but 
there  are  touches  of  nature  in  it,  and  the  character 
of  Celestina  is  brought  out  with  singular  vivacity. 
The  word  tragicomedy  is  many  years  older  than 
this  play,  if  play  that  may  be  called  which  is  but  a 
succession  of  dialogues,  but  I  can  think  of  no  ear- 
lier example  of  its  application  to  a  production  in 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS          9 

dramatic  form  than  by  the  Bachelor  Fernando  de 
Rojas  in  this  instance.  It  was  made  over  into 
English,  rather  than  translated,  in  1520,  —  our 
first  literary  debt  to  Spain,  I  should  guess.  The 
Spanish  theatre,  though  the  influence  of  Seneca  is 
apparent  in  the  form  it  put  on,  is  more  sincerely  a 
growth  of  the  soil  than  any  other  of  modern  times, 
and  it  has  one  interesting  analogy  with  our  own  in 
the  introduction  of  the  clown  into  tragedy,  whether 
by  way  of  foil  or  parody.  The  Spanish  dramatists 
have  been  called  marvels  of  fecundity,  but  the  fa- 
cility of  their  trochaic  measure,  in  which  the  verses 
seem  to  go  of  themselves,  makes  their  feats  less 
wonderful.  The  marvel  would  seem  to  be  rather 
that,  writing  so  easily,  they  also  wrote  so  well. 
Their  invention  is  as  remarkable  as  their  abun- 
dance. Their  drama  and  our  own  have  affected 
the  spirit  and  sometimes  the  substance  of  later 
literature  more  than  any  other.  They  have  to  a 
certain  extent  impregnated  it.  I  have  called  the 
Spanish  theatre  a  product  of  the  soil,  yet  it  must 
not  be  overlooked  that  Sophocles,  Euripides,  Plau- 
tus,  and  Terence  had  been  translated  into  Spanish 
early  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  that  Lope  de 
Rueda,  its  real  founder,  would  willingly  have  fol- 
lowed classical  models  more  closely  had  the  public 
taste  justified  him  in  doing  so.  But  fortunately 
the  national  genius  triumphed  over  traditional  cri- 
terions  of  art,  and  the  Spanish  theatre,  asserting  its 
own  happier  instincts,  became  and  continued  Span- 
ish, with  an  unspeakable  charm  and  flavor  of  its 
own. 


10         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

One  peculiarity  of  the  Spanish  plays  makes  it 
safe  to  recommend  them  even  virginibus  puerisque, 
—  they  are  never  unclean.  Even  Milton  would 
have  approved  a  censorship  of  the  press  that  ac- 
complished this.  It  is  a  remarkable  example  of 
how  sharp  the  contradiction  is  between  the  private 
morals  of  a  people  and  their  public  code  of  moral- 
ity. Certain  things  may  be  done,  but  they  must 
not  seem  to  be  done.  • 

I  have  said  nothing  of  the  earlier  Italian  Drama 
because  it  has  failed  to  interest  me.  But  Italy  had 
indirectly  a  potent  influence,  through  Spenser,  in 
suppling  English  verse  till  it  could  answer  the 
higher  uses  of  the  stage.  The  lines  —  for  they  can 
hardly  be  called  verses  —  of  the  first  attempts  at 
regular  plays  are  as  uniform,  flat,  and  void  of  va- 
riety as  laths  cut  by  machinery,  and  show  only  the 
arithmetical  ability  of  their  fashioners  to  count  as 
high  as  ten.  A  speech  is  a  series  of  such  laths  laid 
parallel  to  each  other  with  scrupulous  exactness. 
But  I  shall  have  occasion  to  return  to  this  topic  in 
speaking  of  Marlowe. 

Who,  then,  were  the  Old  English  Dramatists  ? 
They  were  a  score  or  so  of  literary  bohemians,  for 
the  most  part,  living  from  hand  to  mouth  in  Lon- 
don during  the  last  twenty  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century  and  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  seventeenth, 
of  the  personal  history  of  most  of  whom  we  fortu- 
nately know  little,  and  who,  by  their  good  luck  in 
being  born  into  an  unsophisticated  age,  have  writ- 
ten a  few  things  so  well  that  they  seem  to  have 
written  themselves.  Poor,  nearly  all  of  them, 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS         11 

they  have  left  us  a  fine  estate  in  the  realm  of  Faery. 
Among  them  were  three  or  four  men  of  genius.  A 
comrade  of  theirs  by  his  calling,  but  set  apart  from 
them  alike  by  the  splendor  of  his  endowments  and 
the  more  equable  balance  of  his  temperament,  was 
that  divine  apparition  known  to  mortals  as  Shake- 
speare. The  civil  war  put  an  end  to  their  activity. 
The  last  of  them,  in  the  direct  line,  was  James 
Shirley,  remembered  chiefly  for  two  lines  from  the 
last  stanza  of  a  song  of  his  in  "  The  Contention  of 
Ajax  and  Ulysses,"  which  have  become  a  proverb :  — 

"  Only  the  actions  of  the  just 
Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  the  dust." 

It  is  a  nobly  simple  piece  of  verse,  with  the  slow 
and  solemn  cadence  of  a  funeral  march.  The  hint 
of  it  seems  to  have  been  taken  from  a  passage  in 
that  droningly  dreary  book  the  "  Mirror  for  Magis- 
trates." This  little  poem  is  one  of  the  best  in- 
stances of  the  good  fortune  of  the  men  of  that  age 
in  the  unconscious  simplicity  and  gladness  (I  know 
not  what  else  to  call  it)  of  their  vocabulary.  The 
language,  so  to  speak,  had  just  learned  to  go  alone, 
and  found  a  joy  in  its  own  mere  motion,  which  it 
lost  as  it  grew  older,  and  to  walk  was  no  longer  a 
marvel. 

Nothing  in  the  history  of  literature  seems  more 
startling  than  the  sudden  spring  with  which  Eng- 
lish poetry  blossomed  in  the  later  years  of  Eliza- 
beth's reign.  We  may  account  for  the  seemingly 
unheralded  apparition  of  a  single  genius  like  Dante 
or  Chaucer  by  the  genius  itself ;  for,  given  that, 


12         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

everything  else  is  possible.  But  even  in  such  cases 
as  these  much  must  have  gone  before  to  make  the 
genius  available  when  it  came.  For  the  production 
of  great  literature  there  must  be  already  a  language 
ductile  to  all  the  varying  moods  of  expression. 
There  must  be  a  certain  amount  of  culture,  or  the 
stimulus  of  sympathy  would  be  wanting.  If,  as 
Horace  tells  us,  the  heroes  who  lived  before  Aga- 
memnon have  perished  for  want  of  a  poet  to  cele- 
brate them,  so  doubtless  many  poets  have  gone 
dumb  to  their  graves,  or,  at  any  rate,  have  uttered 
themselves  imperfectly,  for  lack  of  a  fitting  vehicle 
or  of  an  amiable  atmosphere.  Genius,  to  be  sure, 
makes  its  own  opportunity,  but  the  circumstances 
must  be  there  out  of  which  it  can  be  made.  For 
instance,  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  Turold,  or  who- 
ever was  the  author  of  the  "  Chanson  de  Roland," 
was  endowed  with  a  rare  epical  faculty,  and  that  he 
would  have  given  more  emphatic  proof  of  it  had  it 
been  possible  for  him  to  clothe  his  thought  in  a 
form  equivalent  to  the  vigor  of  his  conception. 
Perhaps  with  more  art,  he  might  have  had  less  of 
that  happy  audacity  of  the  first  leap  which  Mon- 
taigne valued  so  highly,  but  would  he  not  have 
gained  could  he  have  spoken  to  us  in  a  verse  as 
sonorous  as  the  Greek  hexameter,  nay,  even  as 
sweet  in  its  cadences,  as  variously  voluble  by  its 
slurs  and  elisions,  and  withal  as  sharply  edged  and 
clean  cut  as  the  Italian  pentameter  ?  It  is  at  least 
a  question  open  to  debate.  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold 
taxes  the  "  Song  of  Roland  "  with  an  entire  want  of 
the  grand  style ;  and  this  is  true  enough ;  but  it 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS         13 

has  immense  stores  of  courage  and  victory  in  it,  as 
Taillefer  proved  at  the  battle  of  Hastings,  —  yes, 
and  touches  of  heroic  pathos,  too. 

Many  things  had  slowly  and  silently  concurred 
to  make  that  singular  pre-eminence  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan literature  possible.  First  of  all  was  the 
growth  of  a  national  consciousness,  made  aware  of 
itself  and  more  cumulatively  operative  by  the  exist- 
ence and  safer  accessibility  of  a  national  capital,  to 
serve  it  both  as  head  and  heart.  The'  want  of  such 
a  focus  of  intellectual,  political,  and  material  activ- 
ity has  had  more  to  do  with  the  backwardness  and 
provincialism  of  our  own  literature  than  is  gener- 
ally taken  into  account.  My  friend  Mr.  Hosea 
Biglow  ventured  to  affirm  twenty  odd  years  ago 
that  we  had  at  last  arrived  at  this  national  con- 
sciousness through  the  convulsion  of  our  civil  war, — 
a  convulsion  so  violent  as  might  well  convince  the 
members  that  they  formed  part  of  a  common  body. 
But  I  make  bold  to  doubt  whether  that  conscious- 
ness will  ever  be  more  than  fitful  and  imperfect, 
whether  it  will  ever,  except  in  some  moment  of  su- 
preme crisis,  pour  itself  into  and  reenforce  the 
individual  consciousness  in  a  way  to  make  our  lit- 
erature feel  itself  of  age  and  its  own  master,  till  we 
shall  have  got  a  common  head  as  well  as  a  common 
body.  It  is  not  the  size  of  a  city  that  gives  it  this 
stimulating  and  expanding  quality,  but  the  fact 
that  it  sums  up  in  itself  and  gathers  all  the  moral 
and  intellectual  forces  of  the  country  in  a  single 
focus.  London  is  still  the  metropolis  of  the  Brit- 
ish as  Paris  of  the  French  race.  We  admit  this 


14         THE    OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

readily  enough  as  regards  Australia  or  Canada,  but 
we  willingly  overlook  it  as  regards  ourselves.  Wash- 
ington is  growing  more  national  and  more  habita- 
ble every  year,  but  it  will  never  be  a  capital  till 
every  kind  of  culture  is  attainable  there  on  as  good 
terms  as  elsewhere.  Why  not  on  better  than  else- 
where ?  We  are  rich  enough.  Bismarck's  first  care 
has  been  the  Museums  of  Berlin.  For  a  fiftieth  part 
of  the  money  Congress  seems  willing  to  waste  in 
demoralizing  the  country,  we  might  have  had  the 
Hamilton  books  and  the  far  more  precious  Ash- 
burnham  manuscripts.  Perhaps  what  formerly 
gave  Boston  its  admitted  literary  supremacy  was 
the  fact  that  fifty  years  ago  it  was  more  truly  a 
capital  than  any  other  American  city.  Edinburgh 
once  held  a  similar  position,  with  similar  results. 
And  yet  how  narrow  Boston  was  !  How  scant  a 
pasture  it  offered  to  the  imagination !  I  have  often 
mused  on  the  dreary  fate  of  the  great  painter  who 
perished  slowly  of  inanition  over  yonder  in  Cam- 
bridgeport,  he  who  had  known  Coleridge  and  Lamb 
and  Wordsworth,  and  who,  if  ever  any, 

"  With  immortal  wine 

Should  have  been  bathed  and  swum  in  more  heart's  ease 
Than  there  are  waters  in  the  Sestian  seas." 

The  pity  of  it !  That  unfinished  Belshazzar  of  his 
was  a  bitter  sarcasm  on  our  self-conceit.  Among 
ws,  it  was  unfinishable.  Whatever  place  can  draw 
together  the  greatest  amount  and  greatest  variety 
of  intellect  and  character,  the  most  abundant 
elements  of  civilization,  performs  the  best  function 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS        15 

of  a  university.  London  was  such  a  centre  in  the 
days  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  And  think  what  a 
school  the  Mermaid  Tavern  must  have  been !  The 
verses  which  Beaumont  addressed  to  Ben  Jonson 
from  the  country  point  to  this :  — 

"  What  thing's  have  we  seen 

Done  at  the  Mermaid !  heard  words  that  have  been 
So  nimble  and  so  full  of  subtle  flame  » 

As  if  that  every  one  from  whence  they  came 
Had  meant  to  put  his  whole  wit  in  a  jest, 
And  had  resolved  to  live  a  fool  the  rest 
Of  his  dull  life  ;  then  when  there  hath  been  thrown 
Wit  able  enough  to  justify  the  town 
For  three  days  past,  wit  that  might  warrant  be 
For  the  whole  city  to  talk  foolishly 
Till  that  were  cancelled  ;  and,  when  that  was  gone, 
We  left  an  air  behind  us  which  alone 
Was  able  to  make  the  two  next  companies 
Right  witty  ;  though  but  downright  fools,  more  wise." 

This  air,  which  Beaumont  says  they  left  behind 
them,  they  carried  with  them,  too.  It  was  the  at- 
mosphere of  culture,  the  open  air  of  it,  which  loses 
much  of  its  bracing  and  stimulating  virtue  in  soli- 
tude and  the  silent  society  of  books.  And  what 
discussions  can  we  not  fancy  there,  of  language,  of 
diction,  of  style,  of  ancients  and  moderns,  of  gram- 
mar even,  for  our  speech  was  still  at  school,  and 
with  license  of  vagrant  truancy  for  the  gathering 
of  wild  flowers  and  the  finding  of  whole  nests  full 
of  singing  birds !  Here  was  indeed  a  new  World 
of  Words,  as  Florio  called  his  dictionary.  And 
the  face-to-face  criticism,  frank,  friendly,  and  with 
chance  of  reply,  how  fruitful  it  must  have  been ! 


16         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

It  was  here,  doubtless,  that  Jonson  found  fault 
with  that  verse  of  Shakespeare's,  — 

"  Caesar  did  never  wrong  but  with  just  cause," 

which  is  no  longer  to  be  found  in  the  play  of  "  Julius 
Caesar."  Perhaps  Heminge  and  Condell  left  it 
out,  for  Shakespeare  could  have  justified  himself 
with  tfye  hook-nosed  fellow  of  Rome's  favorite 
Greek  quotation,  that  nothing  justified  crime  but 
the  winning  or  keeping  of  supreme  power.  Never 
could  London,  before  or  since,  gather  such  an  acad- 
emy of  genius.  It  must  have  been  a  marvellous 
whetstone  of  the  wits,  and  spur  to  generous  emula- 
tion. 

Another  great  advantage  which  the  authors  of 
that  day  had  was  the  freshness  of  the  language, 
which  had  not  then  become  literary,  and  therefore 
more  or  less  commonplace.  All  the  words  they 
used  were  bright  from  the  die,  not  yet  worn  smooth 
in  the  daily  drudgery  of  prosaic  service.  I  am 
not  sure  whether  they  were  so  fully  conscious  of 
this  as  we  are,  who  find  a  surprising  charm  in  it, 
and  perhaps  endow  the  poet  with  the  witchery  that 
really  belongs  to  the  vocables  he  employs.  The 
parts  of  speech  of  these  old  poets  are  just  archaic 
enough  to  please  us  with  that  familiar  strangeness 
which  makes  our  own  tongue  agreeable  if  spoken 
with  a  hardly  perceptible  foreign  accent.  The 
power  of  giving  novelty  to  things  outworn  is, 
indeed,  one  of  the  prime  qualities  of  genius,  and 
this  novelty  the  habitual  phrase  of  the  Elizabeth- 
ans has  for  us  without  any  merit  of  theirs.  But  I 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS         17 

think,  making  all  due  abatements,  that  they  had 
the  hermetic  gift  of  buckling  wings  to  the  feet  of 
their  verse  in  a  measure  which  has  fallen  to  the 
share  of  few  or  no  modern  poets.  I  think  some  of 
them  certainly  were  fully  aware  of  the  fine  qual- 
ities of  their  mother-tongue.  Chapman,  in  the 
poem  "  To  the  Reader,"  prefixed  to  his  translation 
of  the  Iliad,  protests  against  those  who  preferred 
to  it  the  softer  Romance  languages  :  — 

"  And  for  our  tongue  that  still  is  so  impaired 
By  travailing  linguists,  I  can  prove  it  clear, 

That  no  tongue  hath  the  Muses'  utterance  heired 
For  verse  and  that  sweet  Music  to  the  ear 

Strook  out  of  rime,  so  naturally  as  this ; 
Our  monosyllables  so  kindly  fall, 

And  meet,  opposed  in  rhyme,  as  they  did  kiss." 

I  think  Chapman  has  very  prettily  maintained  and 
illustrated  his  thesis.  But,  though  fortunate  in 
being  able  to  gather  their  language  with  the  dew 
still  on  it,  as  herbs  must  be  gathered  for  use  in 
certain  incantations,  we  are  not  to  suppose  that 
our  elders  used  it  indiscriminately,  or  tumbled  out 
their  words  as  they  would  dice,  trusting  that  luck 
or  chance  would  send  them  a  happy  throw  ;  that 
they  did  not  select,  arrange,  combine,  and  make 
use  of  the  most  cunning  artifices  of  modulation 
and  rhythm.  They  debated  all  these  questions, 
we  may  be  sure,  not  only  with  a  laudable  desire  of 
excellence,  and  with  a  hope  to  make  their  native 
tongue  as  fitting  a  vehicle  for  poetry  and  eloquence 
as  those  of  their  neighbors,  or  as  those  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  but  also  with  something  of  the  eager 
joy  of  adventure  and  discovery.  They  must  have 


18         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

felt  with  Lucretius  the  delight  of  wandering  over 
the  pathless  places  of  the  Muse,  and  hence,  perhaps, 
it  is  that  their  step  is  so  elastic,  and  that  we  are 
never  dispirited  by  a  consciousness  of  any  lassitude 
when  they  put  forth  their  best  pace.  If  they  are  nat- 
ural, it  is  in  great  part  the  benefit  of  the  age  they 
lived  in  ;  but  the  winning  graces,  the  picturesque 
felicities,  the  electric  flashes,  I  had  almost  said  the 
explosions,  of  their  style  are  their  own.  And  their 
diction  mingles  its  elements  so  kindly  and  with 
such  gracious  reliefs  of  changing  key,  now  dallying 
with  the  very  childishness  of  speech  like  the  spin- 
sters and  the  knitters  in  the  sun,  and  anon  snatched 
up  without  effort  to  the  rapt  phrase  of  passion  or 
of  tragedy  that  flashes  and  reverberates  ! 

The  dullest  of  them,  for  I  admit  that  many  of 
them  were  dull  as  a  comedy  of  Goethe,  and  dul- 
ness  loses  none  of  its  disheartening  properties  by 
age,  no,  nor  even  by  being  embalmed  in  the  pre- 
cious gems  and  spices  of  Lamb's  affectionate  eulogy, 
—  for  I  am  persuaded  that  I  should  know  a  stupid 
mummy  from  a  clever  one  before  I  had  been  in  his 
company  five  minutes,  —  the  dullest  of  them,  I  say, 
has  his  lucid  intervals.  There  are,  I  grant,  dreary 
wastes  and  vast  solitudes  in  such  collections  as 
Dodsley's  "  Old  Plays,"  where  we  slump  along 
through  the  loose  sand  without  even  so  much  as  a 
mirage  to  comfort  us  under  the  intolerable  drought 
of  our  companion's  discourse.  Nay,  even  some  of 
the  dramatists  who  have  been  thought  worthy  of 
editions  all  to  themselves,  may  enjoy  that  seclusion 
without  fear  of  its  being  disturbed  by  me. 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS         19 

Let  me  mention  a  name  or  two  of  such  as  I  shall 
not  speak  of  in  this  course.  Robert  Greene  is  one 
of  them.  He  has  all  the  inadequacy  of  imperfectly 
drawn  tea.  I  thank  him,  indeed,  for  the  word 
"  brightsome,"  and  for  two  lines  of  Sephestia's 
song  to  her  child,  — 

"  Weep  not,  my  wanton,  smile  upon  my  knee, 
When  thou  art  old,  there  's  grief  enough  forthee,"  — 

which  have  all  the  innocence  of  the  Old  Age  in 
them.  Otherwise  he  is  naught.  I  say  this  for  the 
benefit  of  the  young,  for  in  my  own  callow  days 
I  took  him  seriously  because  the  Rev.  Alexander 
Dyce  had  edited  him,  and  I  endured  much  in 
trying  to  reconcile  my  instincts  with  my  supersti- 
tion. He  it  was  that  called  Shakespeare  "  an  up- 
start crow  beautified  with  our  feathers,"  as  if  any 
one  could  have  any  use  for  feathers  from  such 
birds  as  he,  except  to  make  pens  of  them.  He  was 
the  cause  of  the  dulness  that  was  in  other  men, 
too,  and  human  nature  feels  itself  partially  avenged 
by  this  stanza  of  an  elegy  upon  him  by  one 
"  R.  B.,"  quoted  by  Mr.  Dyce  :  — 

"  Greene  is  the  pleasing  object  of  an  eye ; 

Greene  pleased  the  eyes  of  all  that  looked  upon  him ; 
Greene  is  the  ground  of  every  painter's  dye  ; 

Greene  gave  the  ground  to  all  that  wrote  upon  him ; 
Nay,  more,  the  men  that  so  eclipsed  his  fame 
Purloyned  his  plumes ;  can  they  deny  the  same  ?  ' ' 

Even  the  libeller  of  Shakespeare  deserved  no- 
thing worse  than  this  I  If  this  is  "  R.  B."  when 
he  was  playing  upon  words,  what  must  he  have 
been  when  serious  ? 

Another  dramatist  whom  we  can  get  on  very 


20         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

well  without  is  George  Peele,  the  friend  and  fellow- 
roisterer  of  Greene.  He,  too,  defied  the  inspiring 
influence  of  the  air  he  breathed  almost  as  success- 
fully as  his  friend.  But  he  had  not  that  genius 
for  being  dull  all  the  time  that  Greene  had,  and 
illustrates  what  I  was  just  saying  of  the  manner 
in  which  the  most  tiresome  of  these  men  waylay 
us  when  we  least  expect  it  with  some  phrase  or 
verse  that  shines  and  trembles  in  the  memory  like 
a  star.  Such  are  :  — 

"  For  her  I  '11  build  a  kingly  bower 
Seated  in  hearing  of  a  hundred  streams  " ; 

and  this,  of  God's  avenging  lightning,  — 

u  At  him  the  thunder  shall  discharge  his  bolt, 
And  his  fair  spouse,  with  bright  and  fiery  wings, 
Sit  ever  burning  in  his  hateful  bones." 

He  also  wrote  some  musically  simple  stanzas,  of 
which  I  quote  the  first  two,  the  rather  that  Thack- 
eray was  fond  of  them  :  — 

"  My  golden  locks  Time  hath  to  silver  turned 

(0  Time  too  swift,  and  swiftness  never  ceasing), 

My  youth  'gainst  age,  and  age  at  youth  hath  spurned, 
But  spurned  in  vain  ;  youth  waneth  by  increasing. 

Beauty,  strength,  and  youth,  flowers  fading  been  ; 

Duty,  faith,  and  love,  are  roots,  and  ever  green. 

"  My  helmet  now  shall  make  an  hive  for  bees, 
And  lover's  songs  shall  turn  to  holy  psalms  ; 

A  man-at-arms  must  now  serve  on  his  knees, 
And  feed  on  prayers,  that  are  old  age's  alms. 

But  though  from  court  to  cottage  I  depart, 

My  saint  is  sure  of  mine  unspotted  heart." 

There  is  a  pensiveness  in  this,  half  pleasurable, 
half  melancholy,  that  has  a  charm  of  its  own. 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS        21 

• 

Thomas  Dekker  is  a  far  more  important  person. 
Most  of  his  works  seem  to  have  been  what  artists 
call  pot-boilers,  written  at  ruinous  speed,  and  with 
the  bailiff  rather  than  the  Muse  at  his  elbow. 
There  was  a  liberal  background  of  prose  in  him, 
as  in  Ben  Jonson,  but  he  was  a  poet  and  no  mean 
one,  as  he  shows  by  the  careless  good  luck  of  his 
epithets  and  similes.  He  could  rise  also  to  a 
grave  dignity  of  style  that  is  grateful  to  the  ear, 
nor  was  he  incapable  of  that  heightened  emotion 
which  might  almost  pass  for  passion.  His  fancy 
kindles  wellnigh  to  imagination  at  times,  and 
ventures  on  those  extravagances  which  entice  the 
fancy  of  the  reader  as  with  the  music  of  an  invita- 
tion to  the  waltz.  I  had  him  in  my  mind  when 
I  was  speaking  of  the  obiter  dicta,  of  the  fine 
verses  dropt  casually  by  these  men  when  you  are 
beginning  to  think  they  have  no  poetry  in  them. 
Fortune  tells  Fortunatus,  in  the  play  of  that  name, 
that  he  shall  have  gold  as  countless  as 

"  Those  gilded  wantons  that  in  swarms  do  run 
To  warm  their  slender  bodies  in  the  sun," 

thus  giving  him  a  hint  also  of  its  ephemeral  nature. 
Here  is  a  verse,  too,  that  shows  a  kind  of  bleakish 
sympathy  of  sound  and  sense.  Long  life,  he  tells 

us,  — 

"  Is  a  long  journey  in  December  gone." 

It  may  be  merely  my  fancy,  but  I  seem  to  hear  a 
melancholy  echo  in  it,  as  of  footfalls  on  frozen 
earth.  Or  take  this  for  a  pretty  fancy :  — 

"  The  moon  hath  tliroug-h  her  bow  scarce  drawn  to  the  head, 
Like  to  twelve  silver  arrows,  all  the  months 
Since  —  " 


22         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

when  do  you  suppose  ?  I  give  you  three  guesses, 
as  the  children  say.  Since  1600  !  Poor  Fancy 
shudders  at  this  opening  of  Haydn's  "  Dictionary 
of  Dates  "  and  thinks  her  silver  arrows  a  little  out 
of  place,  like  a  belated  masquerader  going  home 
under  the  broad  grin  of  day.  But  the  verses  them- 
selves seem  plucked  from  "  Midsummer-Night's 
Dream." 

This  is  as  good  an  instance  as  may  be  of  the 
want  of  taste,  of  sense  of  congruity,  and  of  the  del- 
icate discrimination  that  makes  style,  which  strikes 
and  sometimes  even  shocks  us  in  the  Old  Drama- 
tists. This  was  a  disadvantage  of  the  age  into 
which  they  were  born,  and  is  perhaps  implied  in 
the  very  advantages  it  gave  them,  and  of  which 
I  have  spoken.  Even  Shakespeare  offends  some- 
times in  this  way.  Good  taste,  if  mainly  a  gift  of 
nature,  is  also  an  acquisition.  It  was  not  impos- 
sible even  then.  Samuel  Daniel  had  it,  but  the  cau- 
tious propriety  with  which  it  embarrassed  him  has 
made  his  drama  of  "  Cleopatra  "  unapproachable, 
in  more  senses  than  one,  in  its  frigid  regularity. 
His  contemplative  poetry,  thanks  to  its  grave 
sweetness  of  style,  is  among  the  best  in  our  lan- 
guage. And  Daniel  wrote  the  following  sentences, 
which  explain  better  than  anything  I  could  say 
why  his  contemporaries,  in  spite  of  their  manifest 
imperfections,  pleased  then  and  continue  to  please : 
"  Suffer  the  world  to  enjoy  that  which  it  knows 
and  what  it  likes,  seeing  whatsoever  form  of  words 
doth  move  delight,  and  sway  the  affections  of  men, 
in  what  Scythian  sort  soever  it  be  disposed  and 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS        23 

uttered,  that  is  true  number,  measure,  eloquence, 
and  the  perfection  of  speech."  Those  men  did 
"  move  delight,  and  sway  the  affections  of  men,"  in 
a  very  singular  manner,  gaining,  on  the  whole,  per- 
haps, more  by  their  liberty  than  they  lost  by  their 
license.  But  it  is  only  genius  that  can  safely  pro- 
fit by  this  immunity.  Form,  of  which  we  hear  so 
much,  is  of  great  value,  but  it  is  not  of  the  highest 
value,  except  in  combination  with  other  qualities 
better  than  itself ;  and  it  is  worth  noting  that  the 
modern  English  poet  who  seems  least  to  have  re- 
garded it,  is  also  the  one  who  has  most  powerfully 
moved,  swayed,  and  delighted  those  who  are  wise 
enough  to  read  him. 

One  more  passage  and  I  have  done.  It  is  from 
the  same  play  of  "  Old  Fortunatus,"  a  favorite  of 
mine.  The  Soldan  of  Babylon  shows  Fortunatus 
his  treasury,  or  cabinet  of  bric-a-brac  :  — 

"Behold  yon  tower:  there  stands  mine  armoury, 
In  which  are  corselets  forged  of  beaten  gold 
To  arm  ten  hundred  thousand  righting  men, 
Whose  glittering  squadrons  when  the  sun  beholds, 
They  seem  like  to  ten  hundred  thousand  Joves, 
When  Jove  on  the  proud  back  of  thunder  rides, 
Trapped  all  in  lightning-flames.     There  can  I  show  thee 
The  ball  of  gold  that  set  all  Troy  on  fire  ; 
There  shalt  thou  see  the  scarf  of  Cupid's  mother, 
Snatcht  from  the  soft  moist  ivory  of  her  arm 
To  wrap  about  Adonis'  wounded  thigh  ; 
There  shalt  thou  see  a  wheel  of  Titan's  car 
Which  dropt  from  Heaven  when  Phaethon  fired  the  world. 
I  '11  give  thee  (if  thou  wilt)  two  silver  doves 
Composed  by  magic  to  divide  the  air, 
Who,  as  they  flie,  shall  clap  their  silver  winga 
And  give  strange  music  to  the  elements. 


24         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

I  '11  give  thee  else  the  fan  of  Proserpine, 
Which,  in  reward  for  a  sweet  Thracian  song, 
The  blackbrow'd  Empress  threw  to  Orpheus, 
Being  come  to  fetch  EurydiCe  from  hell." 

This  is,  here  and  there,  tremblingly  near  bom- 
bast, but  its  exuberance  is  cheery,  and  the  quaint- 
ness  of  Proserpine's  fan  shows  how  real  she  was  to 
the  poet.  Hers  was  a  generous  gift,  considering 
the  climate  in  which  Dekker  evidently  supposed 
her  to  dwell,  and  speaks  well  for  the  song  that 
could  make  her  forget  it.  There  is  crudeness,  as  if 
the  wine  had  been  drawn  before  the  ferment  was 
over,  but  the  arm  of  Venus  is  from  the  life,  and 
that  one  verse  gleams  and  glows  among  the  rest 
like  the  thing  it  describes*  The  whole  passage  is 
a  good  example  of  fancy,  whimsical,  irresponsible. 
But  there  is  more  imagination  and  power  to  move 
the  imagination  in  Shakespeare's  "  sunken  wreck 
and  sunless  treasures  "  than  all  his  contemporaries 
together,  not  even  excepting  Marlowe,  could  have 
mustered. 

We  lump  all  these  poets  together  as  dramatists 
because  they  wrote  for  the  theatre,  and  yet  how  little 
they  were  truly  dramatic  seems  proved  by  the  fact 
that  none,  or  next  to  none,  of  their  plays  have  held 
the  stage.  Not  one  of  their  characters,  that  I  can 
remember,  has  become  one  of  the  familiar  figures 
that  make  up  the  habitual  society  of  any  cultivated 
memory  even  of  the  same  race  and  tongue.  Mar- 
lowe, great  as  he  was,  makes  no  exception.  To 
some  of  them  we  cannot  deny  genius,  but  creative 
genius  we  must  deny  to  all  of  them,  and  dramatic 
genius  as  well. 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS         25 

This  last,  indeed,  is  one  of  the  rarest  gifts  be- 
stowed on  man.  What  is  that  which  we  call  dra- 
matic ?  In  the  abstract,  it  is  thought  or  emotion  in 
action,  or  on  its  way  to  become  action.  In  the  con- 
crete, it  is  that  which  is  more  vivid  if  represented 
than  described,  and  which  would  lose  if  merely  nar- 
rated. Goethe,  for  example,  had  little  dramatic 
power;  though,  if  taking  thought  could  have 
earned  it,  he  would  have  had  enough,  for  he  stud- 
ied the  actual  stage  all  his  life.  The  characters  hi 
his  plays  seem  rather  to  express  his  thoughts  than 
their  own.  Yet  there  is  one  admirably  dramatic 
scene  in  "Faust"  which  illustrates  what  I  have  been 
saying.  I  mean  Margaret  in  the  cathedral,  sug- 
gested to  Goethe  by  the  temptation  of  Justina  in 
Calderon's  "  Magico  Prodigioso,"  but  full  of  horror 
as  that  of  seductiveness.  We  see  and  hear  as  we 
read.  Her  own  bad  conscience  projected  in  the 
fiend  who  mutters  despair  into  her  ear,  and  the 
awful  peals  of  the  "  Dies  Irae,"  that  most  terribly 
resonant  of  Latin  hymns,  as  if  blown  from  the  very 
trump  of  doom  itself,  coming  in  at  intervals  to  re- 
mind her  that  the 

"  Tuba  mirum  spargens  sonnm 
Per  sepulchra  regionum 
Coget  omnes  ante  thronum," 

herself  among  the  rest,  —  all  of  this  would  be 
weaker  in  narration.  This  is  real,  and  needs  reali- 
zation by  the  senses  to  be  fully  felt.  Compare  it 
with  Dimmesdale  mounting  the  pillory  at  night,  in 
"  The  Scarlet  Letter,"  to  my  thinking  the  deepest 
thrust  of  what  may  be  called  the  metaphysical  im- 


26         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

agination  since  Shakespeare.  There  we  need  only 
a  statement  of  the  facts  —  pictorial  statement,  of 
course,  as  Hawthorne's  could  not  fail  to  be  —  and 
the  effect  is  complete.  Thoroughly  to  understand 
a  good  play  and  enjoy  it,  even  in  the  reading,  the 
imagination  must  body  forth  its  personages,  and 
see  them  doing  or  suffering  in  the  visionary  theatre 
of  the  brain.  There,  indeed,  they  are  best  seen, 
and  Hamlet  or  Lear  loses  that  ideal  quality  which 
makes  him  typical  and  universal  if  he  be  once  com- 
pressed within  the  limits,  or  associated  with  the 
lineaments,  of  any,  even  the  best,  actor. 

It  is  for  their  poetical  qualities,  for  their  gleams 
of  imagination,  for  their  quaint  and  subtle  fancies, 
for  their  tender  sentiment,  and  for  their  charm  of 
diction  that  these  old  playwrights  are  worth  read- 
ing. They  are  the  best  comment  also  to  convince 
us  of  the  immeasurable  superiority  of  Shakespeare. 
Several  of  them,  moreover,  have  been  very  inad- 
equately edited,  or  not  at  all,  which  is  perhaps  bet- 
ter ;  and  it  is  no  useless  discipline  of  the  wits,  no 
unworthy  exercise  of  the  mind,  to  do  our  own  edit- 
ing as  we  go  along,  winning  back  to  its  cradle  the 
right  word  for  the  changeling  the  printers  have  left 
in  his  stead,  making  the  lame  verses  find  their  feet 
again,  and  rescuing  those  that  have  been  tumbled 
higgledy-piggledy  into  a  mire  of  prose.  A  strenu- 
ous study  of  this  kind  will  enable  us  better  to  un- 
derstand many  a  faulty  passage  in  our  Shakespeare, 
and  to  judge  of  the  proposed  emendations  of  them, 
or  to  make  one  to  our  own  liking.  There  is  no 
better  school  for  learning  English,  and  for  learning 


THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS         27 

it  when,  in  many  important  respects,  it  was  at  its 
best. 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  shall  not  seem  to  talk  to  you 
of  many  things  that  seem  trivialities  if  weighed  in 
the  huge  business  scales  of  life,  but  I  am  always 
glad  to  say  a  word  in  behalf  of  what  most  men  con- 
sider useless,  and  to  say  it  the  rather  because  it  has 
so  few  friends.  I  have  observed,  and  am  sorry  to 
have  observed,  that  English  poetry,  at  least  in  its 
older  examples,  is  less  read  now  than  when  I  was 
young.  I  do  not  believe  this  to  be  a  healthy  symp- 
tom, for  poetry  frequents  and  keeps  habitable  those 
upper  chambers  of  the  mind  that  open  toward  the 
sun's  rising. 


II 

MARLOWE 

I  SHALL  preface  what  I  have  to  say  of  Marlowe 
with  a  few  words  as  to  the  refinement  which  had 
been  going  on  in  the  language,  and  the  greater 
ductility  which  it  had  been  rapidly  gaming,  and 
which  fitted  it  for  the  use  of  the  remarkable  group 
of  men  who  made  an  epoch  of  the  reign  of  Eliza- 
beth. Spenser  was  undoubtedly  the  poet  to  whom 
we  owe  most  in  this  respect,  and  the  very  great  con- 
trast between  his  "  Shepherd's  Calendar,"  pub- 
lished in  1579,  and  his  later  poems  awakens  curi- 
osity. In  his  earliest  work  there  are  glimpses, 
indeed,  of  those  special  qualities  which  have  won 
for  him  the  name  of  the  poet's  poet,  but  they  are 
rare  and  fugitive,  and  certainly  never  would  have 
warranted  the  prediction  of  such  poetry  as  was  to 
follow.  There  is  nothing  here  to  indicate  that  a 
great  artist  in  language  had  been  born.  Two 
causes,  I  suspect,  were  mainly  effective  in  this 
transformation,  I  am  almost  tempted  to  say  tran- 
substantiation,  -of  the  man.  The  first  was  his 
practice  in  translation  (true  also  of  Marlowe),  than 
which  nothing  gives  a  greater  choice  and  mastery 
of  one's  mother  -  tongue,  for  one  must  pause  and 
weigh  and  judge  every  word  with  the  greatest 
nicety,  and  cunningly  transfuse  idiom  into  idiom. 
The  other,  and  by  far  the  more  important,  was  his 


MARLOWE  29 

study  of  the  Italian  poets.  The  "  Faerie  Queene  " 
is  full  of  loving  reminiscence  of  them,  but  their 
happiest  influence  is  felt  in  his  lyrical  poems.  For 
these,  I  think,  make  it  plain  that  Italy  first  taught 
him  how  much  of  the  meaning  of  verse  is  in  its 
music,  and  trained  his  ear  to  a  sense  of  the  harmony 
as  well  as  the  melody  of  which  English  verse  was 
capable  or  might  be  made  capable.  Compare  the 
sweetest  passage  in  any  lyric  of  the  "  Shepherd's 
Calendar  "  with  the  eloquent  ardor  of  the  poorest, 
if  any  be  poor,  in  the  "  Epithalamion,"  and  we  find 
ourselves  in  a  new  world  where  music  had  just  been 
invented.  This  we  owe,  beyond  any  doubt,  to 
Spenser's  study  of  the  Italian  canzone.  Nay,  the 
whole  metrical  movement  of  the  "  Epithalamion  " 
recalls  that  of  Petrarca's  noble  "  Spirto  gentil"  I 
repeat  that  melody  and  harmony  were  first  natura- 
lized in  our  language  by  Spenser.  I  love  to  recall 
these  debts,  for  it  is  pleasant  to  be  grateful  even  to 
the  dead. 

Other  men  had  done  their  share  towards  what 
may  be  called  the  modernization  of  our  English, 
and  among  these  Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  conspicuous. 
He  probably  gave  it  greater  ease  of  movement,  and 
seems  to  have  done  for  it  very  much  what  Dryden 
did  a  century  later  in  establishing  terms  of  easier 
intercourse  between  the  language  of  literature  and 
t^3  language  of  cultivated  society. 

There  had  been  good  versifiers  long  before. 
Chaucer,  for  example,  and  even  Gower,  wearisome 
as  he  mainly  is,  made  verses  sometimes  not  only 
easy  in  movement,  but  in  which  the  language  seems 


30          THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

strangely  modern.  That  most  dolefully  dreary  of 
books,  "  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,"  and  Sackville, 
more  than  any  of  its  authors,  did  something  towards 
restoring  the  dignity  of  verse,  and  helping  it  to 
recover  its  self-respect,  while  Spenser  was  still  a 
youth.  Tame  as  it  is,  the  sunshine  of  that  age  here 
and  there  touches  some  verse  that  ripples  in  the 
sluggish  current  with  a  flicker  of  momentary  illumi- 
nation. But  before  Spenser,  no  English  verse  had 
ever  soared  and  sung,  or  been  filled  with  what  Sid- 
ney calls  "  divine  delightfulness."  Sidney,  it  may 
be  conjectured,  did  more  by  private  criticism  and 
argument  than  by  example.  Drayton  says  of 
him  :  — 

"  The  noble  Sidney  with  this  last  arose, 
That  heroe  for  numbers  and  for  prose, 
That  throughly  paced  our  language  as  to  show 
The  plenteous  English  hand  in  hand  might  go 
With  Greek  and  Latin,  and  did  first  reduce 
Our  tongue  from  Lilly's  -writing  then  in  use." 

But  even  the  affectations  of  Lilly  were  not  without 
their  use  as  helps  to  refinement.  If,  like  Chaucer's 
f rere, — 

"Somewhat  he  lisped,  for  his  wantonness," 

it  was  through  the  desire 

"  To  make  his  English  sweet  upon  his  tongue." 

It  was  the  general  clownishness  against  which  he 
revolted,  and  we  owe  him  our  thanks  for  it.  To 
show  of  what  brutalities  even  recent  writers  could 
be  capable,  it  will  suffice  to  mention  that  Golding, 
in  his  translation  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  makes 
a  witch  mutter  the  devil's  pater-noster,  and  Ulysses 
express  his  fears  of  going  "  to  pot."  I  should  like 


MARLOWE  31 

to  read  you  a  familiar  sonnet  of  Sidney's  for  its 
sweetness  :  — 

"  Come,  Sleep  :  0  Sleep !  the  certain  knot  of  peace, 

The  baiting-place  of  wit,  the  balm  of  woe, 
The  poor  man's  wealth,  the  prisoner's  release, 

The  indifferent  judge  between  the  high  and  low ; 
With  shield  of  proof,  shield  me  from  out  the  press 

Of  those  fierce  darts  despair  at  me  doth  throw ; 
O  make  in  me  those  civil  wars  to  cease  : 

I  will  good  tribute  pay  if  thou  do  so. 
Take  thou  of  me  smooth  pillows,  sweetest  bed, 

A  chamber  deaf  to  noise  and  blind  to  light, 
A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head  : 

And  if  these  things,  as  being  thine  of  right, 
Move  not  thy  heavy  grace,  thou  shalt  in  me, 
Livelier  than  elsewhere,  Stella's  image  see." 

Here  is  ease  and  simplicity ;  but  in  such  a 
phrase  as  "  baiting-place  of  wit "  there  is  also  a 
want  of  that  perfect  discretion  which  we  demand 
of  the  language  of  poetry,  however  we  may  be  glad 
to  miss  it  in  the  thought  or  emotion  which  that  lan- 
guage conveys.  Baiting-place  is  no  more  a  home- 
spun word  than  the  word  inn,  which  adds  a  charm 
to  one  of  the  sweetest  verses  that  Spenser  ever 
wrote ;  but  baiting-place  is  common,  it  smacks  of 
the  hostler  and  postilion,  and  commonness  is  a  very 
poor  relation  indeed  of  simplicity.  But  doubtless 
one  main  cause  of  the  vivacity  of  phrase  which  so 
charms  us  in  our  earlier  writers  is  to  be  found  in 
the  fact  that  there  were  not  yet  two  languages  — 
that  of  life  and  that  of  literature.  The  divorce  be- 
tween the  two  took  place  a  century  and  a  half  later, 
and  that  process  of  breeding  in  and  in  began  which 
at  last  reduced  the  language  of  verse  to  a  kind  of 
idiocy. 


32         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

Do  not  consider  such  discussions  as  these  otiose 
or  nugatory.  The  language  we  are  fortunate 
enough  to  share,  and  which,  I  think,  Jacob  Grimm 
was  right  in  pronouncing,  in  its  admirable  mixture 
of  Saxon  and  Latin,  its  strength  and  sonorousness, 
a  better  literary  medium  than  any  other  modern 
tongue  —  this  language  has  not  been  fashioned  to 
what  it  is  without  much  experiment,  much  failure, 
and  infinite  expenditure  of  pains  and  thought. 
Genius  and  pedantry  have  each  done  its  part 
towards  the  result  which  seems  so  easy  to  us,  and 
yet  was  so  hard  to  win  —  the  one  by  way  of  exam- 
ple, the  other  by  way  of  warning.  The  purity,  the 
elegance,  the  decorum,  the  chastity  of  our  mother- 
tongue  are  a  sacred  trust  in  our  hands.  I  am  tired 
of  hearing  the  foolish  talk  of  an  American  variety 
of  it,  about  our  privilege  to  make  it  what  we  will 
because  we  are  in  a  majority.  A  language  belongs 
to  those  who  know  best  how  to  use  it,  how  to  bring 
out  all  its  resources,  how  to  make  it  search  its  cof- 
fers round  for  the  pithy  or  canorous  phrase  that 
suits  the  need,  and  they  who  can  do  this  have  been 
always  in  a  pitiful  minority.  Let  us  be  thankful 
that  we  too  have  a  right  to  it,  and  have  proved  our 
right,  but  let  us  set  up  no  claim  to  vulgarize  it. 
The  English  of  Abraham  Lincoln  was  so  good  not 
because  he  learned  it  in  Illinois,  but  because  he 
learned  it  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton  and  the  Bible, 
the  constant  companions  of  his  leisure.  And  how 
perfect  it  was  in  its  homely  dignity,  its  quiet 
strength,  the  unerring  aim  with  which  it  struck 
once  nor  needed  to  strike  more  !  The  language  is 


MARLOWE  33 

alive  here,  and  will  grow.  Let  us  do  all  we  can 
with  it  but  debase  it.  Good  taste  may  not  be 
necessary  to  salvation  or  to  success  in  life,  but  it  is 
one  of  the  most  powerful  factors  of  civilization. 
As  a  people  we  have  a  larger  share  of  it  and  more 
widely  distributed  than  I,  at  least,  have  found  else- 
where, but  as  a  nation  we  seem  to  lack  it  altogether. 
Our  coinage  is  ruder  than  that  of  any  country  of 
equal  pretensions,  our  paper  money  is  filthily  in- 
fectious, and  the  engraving  on  it,  mechanically 
perfect  as  it  is,  makes  of  every  bank-note  a  mission- 
ary of  barbarism.  This  should  make  us  cautious 
of  trying  our  hand  in  the  same  fashion  on  the  cir- 
culating medium  of  thought.  But  it  is  high  time 
that  I  should  remember  Maitre  Guillaume  of  Pa- 
telin,  and  come  back  to  my  sheep. 

In  coming  to  speak  of  Marlowe,  I  cannot  help 
fearing  that  I  may  fail  a  little  in  that  equanimity 
which  is  the  first  condition  of  all  helpful  criticism. 
Generosity  there  should  be,  and  enthusiasm  there 
should  be,  but  they  should  stop  short  of  extrava- 
gance. Praise  should  not  weaken  into  eulogy,  nor 
blame  fritter  itself  away  into  fault-finding.  Goethe 
tells  us  that  the  first  thing  needful  to  the  critic, 
as  indeed  it  is  to  the  wise  man  generally,  is  to  see 
the  thing  as  it  really  is  ;  this  is  the  most  precious 
result  of  all  culture,  the  surest  warrant  of  happi- 
ness, or  at  least  of  composure.  But  he  also  bids 
us,  in  judging  any  work,  seek  first  to  discover  its 
beauties,  and  then  its  blemishes  or  defects.  Now 
there  are  two  poets  whom  I  feel  that  I  can  never 
judge  without  a  favorable  bias.  One  is  Spenser, 


34         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

who  was  the  first  poet  I  ever  read  as  a  boy,  not 
drawn  to  him  by  any  enchantment  of  his  matter  or 
style,  but  simply  because  the  first  verse  of  his  great 
poem  was,  — 

"  A  gentle  knight  was  pricking  on  the  plain," 

and  I  followed  gladly,  wishful  of  adventure.  Of 
course  I  understood  nothing  of  the  allegory,  never 
suspected  it,  fortunately  for  me,  and  am  surprised 
to  think  how  much  of  the  language  I  understood. 
At  any  rate,  I  grew  fond  of  him,  and  whenever  I 
see  the  little  brown  folio  in  which  I  read,  my  heart 
warms  to  it  as  to  a  friend  of  my  childhood.  With 
Marlowe  it  was  otherwise.  With  him  I  grew 
acquainted  during  the  most  impressible  and  recep- 
tive period  of  my  youth.  He  was  the  first  man  of 
genius  I  had  ever  really  known,  and  he  naturally 
bewitched  me.  What  cared  I  that  they  said  he 
was  a  deboshed  fellow  ?  nay,  an  atheist  ?  To  me 
he  was  the  voice  of  one  singing  in  the  desert,  of 
one  who  had  found  the  water  of  life  for  which  I 
was  panting,  and  was  at  rest  under  the  palms. 
How  can  he  ever  become  to  me  as  other  poets  are  ? 
But  I  shall  try  to  be  lenient  in  my  admiration. 

Christopher  Marlowe,  the  son  of  a  shoemaker, 
was  born  at  Canterbury,  in  February,  1563,  was 
matriculated  at  Benet  College,  Cambridge,  in  1580, 
received  his  degree  of  bachelor  there  in  1583  and 
of  master  in  1587.  He  came  early  to  London,  and 
was  already  known  as  a  dramatist  before  the  end  of 
his  twenty-fourth  year.  There  is  some  reason  for 
thinking  that  he  was  at  one  time  an  actor.  He  was 


MARLOWE  35 

killed  in  a  tavern  brawl,  by  a  man  named  Archer, 
in  1593,  at  the  age  of  thirty.  He  was  taxed  with 
atheism,  but  on  inadequate  grounds,  as  it  appears 
to  me.  That  he  was  said  to  have  written  a  tract 
against  the  Trinity,  for  which  a  license  to  print  was 
refused  on  the  ground  of  blasphemy,  might  easily 
have  led  to  the  greater  charge.  That  he  had  some 
opinions  of  a  kind  unusual  then  may  be  inferred, 
perhaps,  from  a  passage  in  his  "  Faust."  Faust  asks 
Mephistopheles  how,  being  damned,  he  is  out  of 
hell.  And  Mephistopheles  answers,  "  Why,  this  is 
hell,  nor  am  I  out  of  it."  And  a  little  farther  on 
he  explains  himself  thus :  — 

"  Hell  hath  no  limits,  nor  is  circumscribed 
In  one  self  place  ;  for  where  we  are  is  hell, 
And  where  hell  is  there  must  we  ever  be  ; 
And,  to  conclude,  when  all  the  earth  dissolves, 
And  every  creature  shall  be  purified, 
All  places  shall  be  hell  that  are  not  heaven." 

Milton  remembered  the  first  passage  I  have  quoted, 
and  puts  nearly  the  same  words  into  the  mouth  of 
his  Lucifer.  If  Marlowe  was  a  liberal  thinker,  it 
is  not  strange  that  in  that  intolerant  age  he  should 
have  incurred  the  stigma  of  general  unbelief.  Men 
are  apt  to  blacken  opinions  which  are  distasteful 
to  them,  and  along  with  them  the  character  of  him 
who  holds  them. 

This  at  least  may  be  said  of  him  without  risk  of 
violating  the  rule  of  ne  quid  nimis,  that  he  is  one 
of  the  most  masculine  and  fecundating  natures  in 
the  long  line  of  British  poets.  Perhaps  his  energy 
was  even  in  excess.  There  is  in  him  an  Oriental 


36         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

lavishness.  He  will  impoverish  a  province  for  a 
simile,  and  pour  the  revenues  of  a  kingdom  into 
the  lap  of  a  description.  In  that  delightful  story 
in  the  book  of  Esdras,  King  Darius,  who  has  just 
dismissed  all  his  captains  and  governors  of  cities 
and  satraps,  after  a  royal  feast,  sends  couriers  gal- 
loping after  them  to  order  them  all  back  again,  be- 
cause he  has  found  a  riddle  under  his  pillow,  and 
wishes  their  aid  in  solving  it.  Marlowe  in  like 
manner  calls  in  help  from  every  the  remotest  cor- 
ner of  earth  and  heaven  for  what  seems  to  us  as 
trivial  an  occasion.  I  will  not  say  that  he  is  bom- 
bastic, but  he  constantly  pushes  grandiosity  to  the 
verge  of  bombast.  His  contemporaries  thought  he 
passed  it  in  his  "  Tamburlaine."  His  imagination 
flames  and  flares,  consuming  what  it  should  caress, 
as  Jupiter  did  Semele.  That  exquisite  phrase  of 
Hamlet,  "the  modesty  of  nature,"  would  never 
have  occurred  to  him.  Yet  in  the  midst  of  the 
hurly-burly  there  will  fall  a  sudden  hush,  and  we 
come  upon  passages  calm  and  pellucid  as  mountain 
tarns  filled  to  the  brim  with  the  purest  distillations 
of  heaven.  And,  again,  there  are  single  verses 
that  open  silently  as  roses,  and  surprise  us  with 
that  seemingly  accidental  perfection,  which  there 
is  no  use  in  talking  about  because  itself  says  all 
that  is  to  be  said  and  more. 

There  is  a  passage  in  "  Tamburlaine  "  which  I 
remember  reading  in  the  first  course  of  lectures 
I  ever  delivered,  thirty-four  years  ago,  as  a  poet's 
f  eeling  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  word  to  the  idea :  — 

' '  If  all  the  pens  that  ever  poets  held 
Had  fed  the  feeling  of  their  masters'  thoughts, 


MARLOWE  37 

And  every  sweetness  that  inspired  their  hearts, 
Their  minds,  and  muses  on  admired  themes ; 
If  all  the  heavenly  quintessence  they  still 
From  their  immortal  flowers  of  poesy, 
Wherein,  as  in  a  mirror,  we  perceive 
The  highest  reaches  of  a  human  wit ;  — 
If  these  had  made  one  poem's  period, 
And  all  combined  in  beauty's  worthiness, 
Yet  should  there  hover  in  their  restless  heads 
One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder,  at  the  least, 
Which  into  words  no  virtue  can  digest." 

Marlowe  made  snatches  at  this  forbidden  fruit 
with  vigorous  leaps,  and  not  without  bringing  away 
a  prize  now  and  then  such  as  only  the  fewest  have 
been  able  to  reach.  Of  fine  single  verses  I  give  a 
few  as  instances  of  this  :  — 

"Sometimes  a  lovely  boy  in  Dian's  shape, 
With  hair  that  gilds  the  water  as  it  glides, 
Shall  bathe  him  in  a  spring." 

Here  is  a  couplet  notable  for  dignity  of  poise  de- 
scribing Tamburlaine :  — 

"  Of  stature  tall  and  straightly  fashioned, 
Like  his  desire,  lift  upward  and  divine." 

"  For  every  street  like  to  a  firmament 
Glistered  with  breathing  stars." 

"  Un wedded  maids 

Shadowing  more  beauty  in  their  airy  brows 
Than  have  the  white  breasts  of  the  queen  of  Love." 

This  from  "  Tamburlaine  "  is  particularly  charac- 
teristic :  — 

"Nature 

Doth  teach  us  all  to  have  aspiring  minds. 
Our  souls,  whose  faculties  can  comprehend 
The  wondrous  architecture  of  the  world, 
And  measure  every  wandering  planet's  course, 


38         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

Still  climbing  after  knowledge  infinite, 
And  always  moving  as  the  restless  spheres, 
Will  us  to  wear  ourselves  and  never  rest 
Until  we  reach  the  ripest  fruit  of  all." 

One  of  these  verses  reminds  us  of  that  exquisite 
one  of  Shakespeare  where  he  says  that  Love  is 

"  Still  climbing  trees  in  the  Hesperides." 

But  Shakespeare  puts  a  complexity  of  meaning  into 
his  chance  sayings,  and  lures  the  fancy  to  excur- 
sions of  which  Marlowe  never  dreamt. 

But,  alas,  a  voice  will  not  illustrate  like  a  stere- 
opticon,  and  this  tearing  away  of  fragments  that 
seem  to  bleed  with  the  avulsion  is  like  breaking  off 
a  finger  from  a  statue  as  a  specimen. 

The  impression  he  made  upon  the  men  of  his 
time  was  uniform ;  it  was  that  of  something  new 
and  strange ;  it  was  that  of  genius,  in  short.  Dray- 
ton  says  of  him,  kindling  to  an  unwonted  warmth, 
as  if  he  loosened  himself  for  a  moment  from  the 
choking  coils  of  his  Polyolbion  for  a  larger 
breath :  — 

"Next  Marlowe  bathed  in  the  Thespian  springs 
Had  in  him  those  brave  translunary  things 
That  the  first  poets  had ;  his  raptures  were 
All  air  and  fire,  which  made  his  verses  clear ; 
For  that  fine  madness  still  he  did  retain 
Which  rightly  should  possess  a  poet's  brain." 

And  Chapman,  taking  up  and  continuing  Mar- 
lowe's half -told  story  of  Hero  and  Leander,  breaks 
forth  suddenly  into  this  enthusiasm  of  invocation :  — 

"  Then,  ho !  most  strangely  intellectual  fire 
That,  proper  to  my  soul,  hast  power  to  inspire 


MARLOWE  39 

Her  burning  faculties,  and  with  the  wings 
Of  thy  unsphered  flame  visit'st  the  springs 
Of  spirits  immortal,  now  (as  swift  as  Time 
Doth  follow  motion)  find  the  eternal  clime 
Of  his  free  soul  whose  living  subject  stood 
Up  to  the  chin  in  the  Pierian  flood." 

Surely  Chapman  would  have  sent  his  soul  on  no 
such  errand  had  he  believed  that  the  soul  of  Mar- 
lowe was  in  torment,  as  his  accusers  did  not  scruple 
to  say  that  it  was,  sent  thither  by  the  manifestly 
Divine  judgment  of  his  violent  death. 

Yes,  Drayton  was  right  in  classing  him  with 
"  the  first  poets,"  for  he  was  indeed  such,  and  so 
continues,  —  that  is,  he  was  that  most  indefinable 
thing,  an  original  man,  and  therefore  as  fresh  and 
contemporaneous  to-day  as  he  was  three  hundred 
years  ago.  Most  of  us  are  more  or  less  hampered 
by  our  own  individuality,  nor  can  shake  ourselves 
free  of  that  chrysalis  of  consciousness  and  give  our 
"  souls  a  loose,"  as  Dryden  calls  it  in  his  vigorous 
way.  And  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is  some- 
thing even  finer  than  that  fine  madness,  and  I  think 
I  see  it  in  the  imperturbable  sanity  of  Shakespeare, 
which  made  him  so  much  an  artist  that  his  new 
work  still  bettered  his  old.  I  think  I  see  it  even 
in  the  almost  irritating  calm  of  Goethe,  which,  if 
it  did  not  quite  make  him  an  artist,  enabled  him  to 
see  what  an  artist  should  be,  and  to  come  as  near 
to  being  one  as  his  nature  allowed.  Marlowe  was 
certainly  not  an  artist  in  the  larger  sense,  but  he 
was  cunning  in  words  and  periods  and  the  musical 
modulation  of  them.  And  even  this  is  a  very  rare 
gift.  But  his  mind  could  never  submit  itself  to  a 


40         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

controlling  purpose,  and  renounce  all  other  things 
for  the  sake  of  that.  His  plays,  with  the  single 
exception  of  "  Edward  II.,"  have  no  organic  unity, 
and  such  unity  as  is  here  is  more  apparent  than 
real.  Passages  in  them  stir  us  deeply  and  thrill 
us  to  the  marrow,  but  each  play  as  a  whole  is  in- 
effectual. Even  his  "  Edward  II."  is  regular  only 
to  the  eye  by  a  more  orderly  arrangement  of  scenes 
and  acts,  and  Marlowe  evidently  felt  the  drag  of 
this  restraint,  for  we  miss  the  uncontrollable  en- 
ergy, the  eruptive  fire,  and  the  feeling  that  he  was 
happy  in  his  work.  Yet  Lamb  was  hardly  extra- 
vagant in  saying  that  "  the  death  scene  of  Mar- 
lowe's king  moves  pity  and  terror  beyond  any 
scene,  ancient  or  modern,  with  which  I  am  ac- 
quainted." His  tragedy  of  "  Dido,  Queen  of  Car- 
thage," is  also  regularly  plotted  out,  and  is  also 
somewhat  tedious.  Yet  there  are  many  touches 
that  betray  his  burning  hand.  There  is  one  pas- 
sage illustrating  that  luxury  of  description  into 
which  Marlowe  is  always  glad  to  escape  from  the 
business  in  hand.  Dido  tells  ^Eneas  :  — 

"  ^Eneas,  I  '11  repair  thy  Trojan  ships 
Conditionally  that  thou  wilt  stay  with  me, 
And  let  Achates  sail  to  Italy ; 
I  '11  give  thee  tackling  made  of  rivelled  gold, 
Wound  on  the  barks  of  odoriferous  trees ; 
Oars  of  massy  ivory,  full  of  holes 
Through  which  the  water  shall  delight  to  play ; 
Thy  anchors  shall  be  hewed  from  crystal  rocks 
Which,  if  thou  lose,  shall  shine  above  the  waves ; 
The  masts  whereon  thy  swelling  sails  shall  hang 
Hollow  pyramides  of  silver  plate  ; 
The  sails  of  folded  lawn,  where  shall  be  wrought 


MARLOWE  41 

The  wars  of  Troy,  but  not  Troy's  overthrow ; 
For  ballast,  empty  Dido's  treasury ; 
Take  what  ye  will,  but  leave  ^Eneas  here. 
Achates,  thou  shalt  be  so  seemly  clad 
As  sea-born  nymphs  shall  swarm  about  thy  ships 
And  wanton  mermaids  court  thee  with  sweet  songs, 
Flinging  in  favors  of  more  sovereign  worth 
Than  Thetis  hangs  about  Apollo's  neck, 
So  that  /Eneas  may  but  stay  with  me." 

But  far  finer  than  this,  in  the  same  costly  way, 
is  the  speech  of  Barabas  in  "  The  Jew  of  Malta," 
ending  with  a  line  that  has  incorporated  itself  in 
the  language  with  the  familiarity  of  a  proverb :  — 

"  Give  me  the  merchants  of  the  Indian  mines 
That  trade  in  metal  of  the  purest  mould ; 
The  wealthy  Moor  that  in  the  Eastern  rocks 
Without  control  can  pick  his  riches  up, 
And  in  his  house  heap  pearl  like  pebble-stones, 
Receive  them  free,  and  sell  them  by  the  weight ; 
Bags  of  fiery  opals,  sapphires,  amethysts, 
Jacynths,  hard  topaz,  grass-green  emeralds, 
Beauteous  rubies,  sparkling  diamonds, 
And  seld-seen  costly  stones  of  so  great  price 
As  one  of  them,  indifferently  rated, 


May  serve  in  peril  of  calamity 

To  ransom  great  kings  from  captivity. 

This  is  the  ware  wherein  consists  my  wealth  : 


Infinite  riches  in  a  little  room." 

This  is  the  very  poetry  of  avarice. 

Let  us  now  look  a  little  more  closely  at  Mar- 
lowe as  a  dramatist.  Here  also  he  has  an  impor- 
tance less  for  what  he  accomplished  than  for  what 
he  suggested  to  others.  Not  only  do  I  think  that 
Shakespeare's  verse  caught  some  hints  from  his, 


42         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

but  there  are  certain  descriptive  passages  and  sim- 
iles of  the  greater  poet  which,  whenever  I  read 
them,  instantly  bring  Marlowe  to  my  mind.  This 
is  an  impression  I  might  find  it  hard  to  convey  to 
another,  or  even  to  make  definite  to  myself  ;  but  it 
is  an  old  one,  and  constantly  repeats  itself,  so  that  I 
put  some  confidence  in  it.  Marlowe's  "  Edward  II." 
certainly  served  Shakespeare  as  a  model  for  his 
earlier  historical  plays.  Of  course  he  surpassed 
his  model,  but  Marlowe  might  have  said  of  him  as 
Oderisi,  with  pathetic  modesty,  said  to  Dante  of 
his  rival  and  surpasser,  Franco  of  Bologna,  "  The 
praise  is  now  all  his,  yet  mine  in  part."  But  it  is 
always  thus.  The  path-finder  is  forgotten  when 
the  track  is  once  blazed  out.  It  was  in  Shake- 
speare's "  Richard  II."  that  Lamb  detected  the  influ- 
ence of  Marlowe,  saying  that  "  the  reluctant  pangs 
of  abdicating  royalty  in  Edward  furnished  hints 
which  Shakespeare  has  scarce  improved  upon  in 
Richard."  In  the  parallel  scenes  of  both  plays 
the  sentiment  is  rather  elegiac  than  dramatic,  but 
there  is  a  deeper  pathos,  I  think,  in  Richard,  and 
his  grief  rises  at  times  to  a  passion  which  is  wholly 
wanting  in  Edward.  Let  me  read  Marlowe's  abdi- 
cation scene.  The  irresolute  nature  of  the  king  is 
finely  indicated.  The  Bishop  of  Winchester  has 
come  to  demand  the  crown  ;  Edward  takes  it  off, 
and  says :  — 

"  Here,  take  my  crown ;  the  life  of  Edward  too : 
Two  kings  of  England  cannot  reign  at  once. 
But  stay  awhile :  let  me  be  king  till  night, 
That  I  may  gaze  upon  this  glittering  crown ; 
So  shall  my  eyes  receive  their  last  content, 


MARLOWE  43 

My  head  the  latest  honor  due  to  it, 

And  jointly  both  yield  up  their  wished  right. 

Continue  ever,  thou  celestial  sun ; 

Let  never  silent  night  possess  this  clime ; 

Stand  still,  you  watches  of  the  element ; 

All  times  and  seasons,  rest  you  at  a  stay  — 

That  Edward  may  be  still  fair  England's  king  ! 

But  day's  bright  beam  doth  vanish  fast  away, 

And  needs  I  must  resign  my  wished  crown. 

Inhuman  creatures,  nursed  with  tiger's  milk, 

Why  gape  you  for  your  sovereign's  overthrow  ?  — 

My  diadem,  I  mean,  and  guiltless  life. 

See,  monsters,  see,  I  '11  wear  my  crown  again. 

What,  fear  you  not  the  fury  of  your  king  ? 

I  '11  not  resign,  but,  whilst  I  live,  be  king !  " 

Then,  after  a  short  further  parley  :  — 

"  Here,  receive  my  crown. 

Receive  it  ?     No  ;  these  innocent  hands  of  mine 
Shall  not  be  guilty  of  so  foul  a  crime  : 
He  of  you  all  that  most  desires  my  blood, 
And  will  be  called  the  murderer  of  a  king, 
Take  it.     What,  are  you  moved  ?     Pity  you  me  ? 
Then  send  for  unrelenting  Mortimer, 
And  Isabel,  whose  eyes,  being  turned  to  steel, 
Will  sooner  sparkle  fire  than  shed  a  tear. 
Yet  stay,  for  rather  than  I  '11  look  on  them, 
Here,  here  !  —  Now,  sweet  God  of  Heaven, 
Make  me  despise  this  transitory  pomp, 
And  sit  for  aye  enthronized  in  Heaven ! 
Come,  Death,  and  with  thy  fingers  close  my  eyes, 
Or,  if  I  live,  let  me  forget  myself." 

Surely  one  might  fancy  that  to  be  from  the 
prentice  hand  of  Shakespeare.  It  is  no  small  dis- 
tinction that  this  can  be  said  of  Marlowe,  for  it  can 
be  said  of  no  other.  What  follows  is  still  finer. 
The  ruffian  who  is  to  murder  Edward,  in  order  to 


44         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

evade  his  distrust,  pretends  to  weep.     The   king 
exclaims :  — 

"  Weep'st  thou  already  ?     List  awhile  to  me, 
And  then  thy  heart,  were  it  as  Gurney's  is, 
Or  as  Matrevis',  hewn  from  the  Caucasus, 
Yet  will  it  melt  ere  I  have  done  my  tale. 
This  dungeon  where  they  keep  me  is  the  sink 
Wherein  the  filth  of  all  the  castle  falls, 
And  there  in  mire  and  puddle  have  I  stood 
This  ten  days'  space  ;  and,  lest  that  I  should  sleep, 
One  plays  continually  upon  a  drum  ; 
They  give  me  bread  and  water,  being  a  king ; 
So  that,  for  want  of  sleep  and  sustenance, 
My  mind  's  distempered  and  my  body  numbed, 
And  whether  I  have  limbs  or  no  I  know  not. 
O,  would  my  blood  dropt  out  from  every  vein, 
As  doth  this  water  from  my  tattered  robes  ! 
Tell  Isabel  the  queen  I  looked  not  thus, 
When,  for  her  sake,  I  ran  at  tilt  in  France, 
And  there  unhorsed  the  Duke  of  Cleremont." 

This  is  even  more  in  Shakespeare's  early  manner 
than  the  other,  and  it  is  not  ungrateful  to  our  feel- 
ing of  his  immeasurable  supremacy  to  think  that 
even  he  had  been  helped  in  his  schooling.  There 
is  a  truly  royal  pathos  in  "  They  give  me  bread  and 
water "  ;  and  "  Tell  Isabel  the  queen,"  instead  of 
"  Isabel  my  queen,"  is  the  most  vividly  dramatic 
touch  that  I  remember  anywhere  in  Marlowe.  And 
that  vision  of  the  brilliant  tournament,  not  more 
natural  than  it  is  artistic,  how  does  it  not  deepen 
by  contrast  the  gloom  of  all  that  went  before  !  But 
you  will  observe  that  the  verse  is  rather  epic  than 
dramatic.  I  mean  by  this  that  its  every  pause  and 
every  movement  are  regularly  cadenced.  There  is 
a  kingly  composure  in  it,  perhaps,  but  ware  the 


MARLOWE  45 

passage  not  so  finely  pathetic  as  it  is,  or  the  diction 
less  naturally  simple,  it  would  seem  stiff.  Nothing 
is  more  peculiarly  characteristic  of  the  mature 
Shakespeare  than  the  way  in  which  his  verses 
curve  and  wind  themselves  with  the  -fluctuating 
emotion  or  passion  of  the  speaker  and  echo  his 
mood.  Let  me  illustrate  this  by  a  speech  of  Imogen 
when  Pisanio  gives  her  a  letter  from  her  husband 
bidding  her  meet  him  at  Milford-Haven.  The 
words  seem  to  waver  to  and  fro,  or  huddle  together 
before  the  hurrying  thought,  like  sheep  when  the 
collie  chases  them. 

"  O,  for  a  horse  with  wings !  —  Hear'st  thou,  Pisanio  ? 
He  is  at  Milford-Haven  :   read,  and  tell  me 
How  far  't  is  thither.     If  one  of  mean  affairs 
May  plod  it  in  a  week,  why  may  not  I 
Glide  thither  in  a  day  ?  —  Then,  true  Pisanio  — 
Who  long'st  like  me  to  see  thy  lord  ;  who  long'st 
O,  let  me  'bate  —  but  not  like  me  —  yet  long'st  — 
But  in  a  fainter  kind :  —  0,  not  like  me  ; 
For  mine  's  beyond  beyond  :  say,  and  speak  thick,  — 
Love's  counsellor  should  fill  the  bores  of  hearing, 
To  the  smothering  of  the  sense,  —  how  far  it  is 
To  this  same  blessed  Milford  :   and,  by  the  way, 
Tell  me  how  Wales  was  made  so  happy  as 
To  inherit  such  a  haven  :  but,  first  of  all, 
How  we  may  steal  from  hence." 

The  whole  speech  is  breathless  with  haste,  and  is 
in  keeping  not  only  with  the  feeling  of  the  moment, 
but  with  what  we  already  know  of  the  impulsive 
character  of  Imogen.  Marlowe  did  not,  for  he 
could  not,  teach  Shakespeare  this  secret,  nor  has 
anybody  else  ever  learned  it. 

There  are,  properly  speaking,  no  characters  in 


46         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS. 

the  plays  of  Marlowe  —  but  personages  and  inter- 
locutors. We  do  not  get  to  know  them,  but  only 
to  know  what  they  do  and  say.  The  nearest  ap- 
proach to  a  character  is  Barabas,  in  "  The  Jew  of 
Malta,"  and  he  is  but  the  incarnation  of  the  pop- 
ular hatred  of  the  Jew.  There  is  really  nothing 
human  in  him.  He  seems  a  bugaboo  rather  than 
a  man.  Here  is  his  own  account  of  himself :  — 

"  As  for  myself,  I  walk  abroad  o'  nights, 
And  kill  sick  people  groaning  under  walls  ; 
Sometimes  I  go  about  and  poison  wells  ; 
And  now  and  then,  to  cherish  Christian  thieves, 
I  am  content  to  lose  some  of  my  crowns, 
That  I  may,  walking  in  my  gallery, 
See  'em  go  pinioned  by  my  door  along  ; 
Being  young,  I  studied  physic,  and  began 
To  practise  first  upon  the  Italian  ; 
There  I  enriched  the  priests  with  burials, 
And  always  kept  the  sexton's  arms  in  ure 
With  digging  graves  and  ringing  dead  men's  knells ; 
And,  after  that,  was  I  an  engineer, 
And  in  the  wars  'twixt  France  and  Germany, 
Under  pretence  of  helping  Charles  the  Fifth, 
Slew  friend  and  enemy  with  my  stratagems. 
Then,  after  that,  was  I  an  usurer, 
And  with  extorting,  cozening,  forfeiting, 
And  tricks  belonging  unto  brokery, 
I  filled  the  jails  with  bankrupts  in  a  year, 
And  with  young  orphans  planted  hospitals ; 
And  every  moon  made  some  or  other  mad, 
And  now  and  then  one  hang  himself  for  grief, 
Pinning  upon  his  breast  a  long  great  scroll 
How  I  with  interest  tormented  him. 
But  mark  how  I  am  blest  for  plaguing  them  — 
I  have  as  much  coin  as  will  buy  the  town.'' 

Here  is  nothing  left  for  sympathy.     This  is  the 
mere   lunacy    of  distempered   imagination.     It    is 


MARLOWE  47 

shocking,  and  not  terrible.  Shakespeare  makes  no 
such  mistake  with  Shylock.  His  passions  are  those 
of  a  man,  though  of  a  man  depraved  by  oppression 
and  contumely ;  and  he  shows  sentiment,  as  when 
he  says  of  the  ring  that  Jessica  had  given  for  a 
monkey  :  "  It  was  my  turquoise.  I  had  it  of  Leah 
when  I  was  a  bachelor."  And  yet,  observe  the 
profound  humor  with  which  Shakespeare  makes 
him  think  first  of  its  dearness  as  a  precious  stone 
and  then  as  a  keepsake.  In  letting  him  exact  his 
pound  of  flesh,  he  but  follows  the  story  as  he  found 
it  in  Giraldi  Cinthio,  and  is  careful  to  let  us  know 
that  this  Jew  had  good  reason,  or  thought  he  had, 
to  hate  Christians.  At  the  end,  I  think  he  meant 
us  to  pity  Shylock,  and  we  do  pity  him.  And  with 
what  a  smiling  background  of  love  and  poetry  does 
he  give  relief  to  the  sombre  figure  of  the  Jew  !  In 
Marlowe's  play  there  is  no  respite.  And  yet  it 
comes  nearer  to  having  a  connected  plot,  in  which 
one  event  draws  on  another,  than  any  other  of  his 
plays.  I  do  not  think  Milman  right  in  saying  that 
the  interest  falls  off  after  the  first  two  acts.  I  find 
enough  to  carry  me  on  to  the  end,  where  the  defiant 
death  of  Barabas  in  a  caldron  of  boiling  oil  he  had 
arranged  for  another  victim  does  something  to 
make  a  man  of  him.  But  there  is  no  controlling 
reason  in  the  piece.  Nothing  happens  because  it 
must,  but  because  the  author  wills  it  so.  The  con- 
ception of  life  is  purely  arbitrary,  and  as  far  from 
nature  as  that  of  an  imaginative  child.  It  is  curi- 
ous, however,  that  here,  too,  Marlowe  should  have 
pointed  the  way  to  Shakespeare.  But  there  is  no 


48        THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

resemblance  between  the  Jew  of  Malta  and  the 
Jew  of  Venice,  except  that  both  have  daughters 
whom  they  love.  Nor  is  the  analogy  close  even 
here.  The  love  which  Barabas  professes  for  his 
child  fails  to  humanize  him  to  us,  because  it  does 
not  prevent  him  from  making  her  the  abhorrent 
instrument  of  his  wanton  malice  in  the  death  of  her 
lover,  and  because  we  cannot  believe  him  capable 
of  loving  anything  but  gold  and  vengeance.  There 
is  always  something  extravagant  in  the  imagina- 
tion of  Marlowe,  but  here  it  is  the  extravagance  of 
absurdity.  Generally  he  gives  us  an  impression  of 
power,  of  vastness,  though  it  be  the  vastness  of 
chaos,  where  elemental  forces  hurtle  blindly  one 
against  the  other.  But  they  are  elemental  forces, 
and  not  mere  stage  properties.  Even  Tambur- 
laine,  if  we  see  in  him  —  as  Marlowe,  I  think, 
meant  that  we  should  see  —  the  embodiment  of 
brute  force,  without  reason  and  without  conscience, 
ceases  to  be  a  blusterer,  and  becomes,  indeed,  as  he 
asserts  himself,  the  scourge  of  God.  There  is  an 
exultation  of  strength  in  this  play  that  seems  to 
add  a  cubit  to  our  stature.  Marlowe  had  found 
the  way  that  leads  to  style,  and  helped  others  to 
find  it,  but  he  never  arrived  there.  He  had  not 
self-denial  enough.  He  can  refuse  nothing  to  his 
fancy.  He  fails  of  his  effect  by  over-emphasis, 
heaping  upon  a  slender  thought  a  burthen  of  ex- 
pression too  heavy  for  it  to  carry.  But  it  is  not 
with  fagots,  but  with  priceless  Oriental  stuffs,  that 
he  breaks  their  backs. 

Marlowe's  "  Dr.   Faustus "  interests    us    in    an- 


MARLOWE  49 

other  way.  Here  he  again  shows  himself  as  a 
precursor.  There  is  no  attempt  at  profound  philo- 
sophy in  this  play,  and  in  the  conduct  of  it  Mar- 
lowe has  followed  the  prose  history  of  Dr.  Faustus 
closely,  even  in  its  scenes  of  mere  buffoonery.  Dis- 
engaged from  these,  the  figure  of  the  protagonist 
is  not  without  grandeur.  It  is  not  avarice  or  lust 
that  tempts  him  at  first,  but  power.  Weary  of 
his  studies  in  law,  medicine,  and  divinity,  which 
have  failed  to  bring  him  what  he  seeks,  he  turns  to 
necromancy :  — 

"  These  metaphysics  of  magicians 
And  necromantic  books  are  heavenly. 

Oh,  what  a  world  of  profit  and  delight, 

Of  power,  of  honor,  of  omnipotence, 

Is  promised  to  the  studious  artisan  ! 

All  things  that  move  between  the  quiet  poles 

Shall  be  at  my  command.     Emperors  and  kings 

Are  but  obeyed  in  their  several  provinces, 

Nor  can  they  raise  the  winds  or  rend  the  clouds ; 

But  his  dominion  that  exceeds  in  this 

Stretcheth  as  far  as  doth  the  mind  of  man  ; 

A  sound  magician  is  a  mighty  god : 

Here,  Faustus,  tire  thy  brains  to  gain  a  deity." 

His  good  angel  intervenes,  but  the  evil  spirit  at  the 
other  ear  tempts  him  with  power  again  :  — 

"  Be  thou  on  earth  as  Jove  is  in  the  sky, 
Lord  and  commander  of  these  elements." 

Ere  long  Faustus  begins  to  think  of  power  for 
baser  uses :  — 

"  How  am  I  glutted  with  conceit  of  this ! 
Shall  I  make  spirits  fetch  me  what  I  please, 
Resolve  me  of  all  ambiguities, 
Pei-form  what  desperate  enterprise  I  will  ? 


50         THE   OLD   ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

I  '11  have  them  fly  to  India  for  gold, 
Ransack  the  ocean  for  orient  pearl, 
And  search  all  corners  of  the  new-found  world 
For  pleasant  fruits  and  princely  delicates ; 
I  '11  have  them  read  me  strange  philosophy, 
And  tell  the  secrets  of  all  foreign  kings." 

And  yet  it  is  always  to  the  pleasures  of  the  intel- 
lect that  he  returns.  It  is  when  the  good  and  evil 
spirits  come  to  him  for  the  second  time  that  wealth 
is  offered  as  a  bait,  and  after  Faustus  has  signed 
away  his  soul  to  Lucifer,  he  is  tempted  even  by 
more  sensual  allurements.  I  may  be  reading  into 
the  book  what  is  not  there,  but  I  cannot  help  think- 
ing that  Marlowe  intended  in  this  to  typify  the  in- 
evitably continuous  degradation  of  a  soul  that  has 
renounced  its  ideal,  and  the  drawing  on  of  one  vice 
by  another,  for  they  go  hand  in  hand  like  the 
Hours.  But  even  in  his  degradation  the  pleasures 
of  Faustus  are  mainly  of  the  mind,  or  at  worst  of  a 
sensuous  and  not  sensual  kind.  No  doubt  in  this 
Marlowe  is  unwittingly  betraying  his  own  tastes. 
Faustus  is  made  to  say  :  — 

"  And  long  ere  this  I  should  have  slain  myself 
Had  not  sweet  pleasure  conquered  deep  despair. 
Have  I  not  made  blind  Homer  sing  to  me 
Of  Alexander's  love  and  CEnon's  death  ? 
And  hath  not  he  that  built  the  walls  of  Thebes 
With  ravishing  sound  of  his  melodious  harp 
Made  music  with  my  Mephistophilis  ? 
Why  should  I  die,  then  ?  basely  why  despair  ?  " 

This  employment  of  the  devil  in  a  duet  seems 
odd.  I  remember  no  other  instance  of  his  appear- 
ing as  a  musician  except  in  Burns's  "  Tarn  o'  Shan- 
ter."  The  last  wish  of  Faustus  was  Helen  of  Troy. 
Mephistophilis  fetches  her,  and  Faustus  exclaims : 


MARLOWE  51 

"  Was  this  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships, 
And  burned  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium  ? 
Sweet  Helen,  make  me  immortal  with  a  kiss ! 


Here  will  I  dwell,  for  Heaven  is  in  these  lips, 
And  all  is  dross  that  is  not  Helena : 

Oh,  thou  art  fairer  than  the  evening  air 
Clad  in  the  beauty  of  a  thousand  stars." 

No  such  verses  had  ever  been  heard  on  the  Eng- 
lish stage  before,  and  this  was  one  of  the  great 
debts  our  language  owes  to  Marlowe.  He  first 
taught  it  what  passion  and  fire  were  in  its  veins. 
The  last  scene  of  the  play,  in  which  the  bond  with 
Lucifer  becomes  payable,  is  nobly  conceived.  Here 
the  verse  rises  to  the  true  dramatic  sympathy  of 
which  I  spoke.  It  is  swept  into  the  vortex  of 
Faust's  eddying  thought,  and  seems  to  writhe  and 
gasp  in  that  agony  of  hopeless  despair  :  — 

"Ah,  Faustus, 

Now  hast  thou  but  one  bare  hour  to  live, 
And  then  thou  must  be  damned  perpetually ! 
Stand  still,  ye  ever-moving  spheres  of  Heaven, 
That  time  may  cease  and  midnight  never  come  ; 
Fair  Nature's  eye,  rise,  rise  again,  and  make 
Perpetual  day  ;  or  let  this  hour  be  but 
A  year,  a  month,  a  week,  a  natural  day, 
That  Faustus  may  repent  and  save  his  soul ! 
The  stars  move  still,  time  runs,  the  clock  will  strike, 
The  devil  will  come,  and  Faustus  must  be  damned. 
Oh,  I  '11  leap  up  to  my  God  !     Who  pulls  me  down  ? 
See,  see,  where  Christ's  blood  streams  in  the  firmament ! 
One  drop  would  save  my  soul  —  half  a  drop  ;  ah,  my  Christ ! 
Ah,  rend  not  my  heart  for  naming  of  my  Christ ! 
Yet  will  I  call  on  Him.     Oh,  spare  me,  Lucifer ! 
Where  is  it  now  ?  'T  is  gone  ;  and  see  where  God 
Stretcheth  out  His  arm  and  bends  His  ireful  brows  I 


52  THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

Mountains  and  hills,  come,  come  and  fall  on  me, 
And  hide  me  from  the  heavy  wrath  of  God  ! 
No  ?     No  ? 

Then  will  I  headlong  run  into  the  earth. 
Earth,  gape  !     Oh  no,  it  will  not  harbor  me  ! 

Ah  !  half  the  hour  is  past ;   't  will  all  be  past  anon. 

OGod, 

If  Thou  wilt  not  have  mercy  on  my  soul, 

Yet,  for  Christ's  sake,  whose  blood  hath  ransomed  me, 

Impose  some  end  to  my  incessant  pain  ; 

Let  Faustus  live  in  hell  a  thousand  years  — 

A  hundred  thousand  —  and  at  last  be  saved ! 

Oh,  no  end  's  limited  to  damned  souls. 

Why  wert  thou  not  a  creature  wanting  soul  ? 

Or  why  was  this  immortal  that  thou  hast  ? 

Ah,  Pythagoras'  metempsychosis,  were  that  true, 

This  soul  should  fly  from  me,  and  I  be  changed 

Unto  some  brutish  beast !     All  beasts  are  happy, 

For  when  they  die 

Their  souls  are  soon  dissolved  in  elements ; 

But  mine  must  live  still  to  be  plagued  in  Hell ! 

Cursed  be  the  parents  that  engendered  me  ! 

No,  Faustus,  curse  thyself,  curse  Lucifer, 

That  hath  deprived  thee  of  the  joys  of  Heaven. 

Oh,  it  strikes  !  it  strikes !     Now,  body,  turn  to  air, 

Or  Lucifer  will  bear  thee  quick  to  Hell. 

0  soul,  be  changed  to  little  waterdrops 
And  fall  into  the  ocean  ;  ne'er  be  found  ! 
My  God,  my  God,  look  not  so  fierce  on  me ! 
Adders  and  serpents,  let  me  breathe  awhile. 
Ugly  Hell,  gape  not.     Come  not,  Lucifer  ! 

1  '11  burn  my  books.     Ah,  Mephistophilis !  " 

It  remains  to  say  a  few  words  of  Marlowe's  poem 
of  "  Hero  and  Leander,"  for  in  translating  it  from 
Musaeus  he  made  it  his  own.  It  has  great  ease  and 
fluency  of  versification,  and  many  lines  as  perfect 
in  their  concinnity  as  those  of  Pope,  but  infused 
with  a  warmer  coloring  and  a  more  poetic  fancy. 
Here  is  found  the  verse  that  Shakespeare  quotes 


MARLOWE  53 

somewhere.  The  second  verse  of  the  following 
couplet  has  precisely  Pope's  cadence :  — 

"  Unto  her  was  he  led,  or  rather  drawn, 
By  those  white  limbs  that  sparkled  through  the  lawn.' ' 

It  was  from  this  poem  that  Keats  caught  the  in- 
spiration for  his  "  Endymion."  A  single  passage 
will  serve  to  prove  this  :  — 

"So  fair  a  church  as  this  had  Venus  none  : 
The  walls  were  of  discolored  jasper  stone, 
Wherein  was  Proteus  carved  ;  and  overhead 
A  lively  vine  of  green  sea-agate  spread, 
Where  by  one  hand  light-headed  Bacchus  hung, 
And  with  the  other  wine  from  grapes  outwrung." 

Milton,  too,  learned  from  Marlowe  the  charm  of 
those  long  sequences  of  musical  proper  names 
of  which  he  made  such  effective  use.  Here  are 
two  passages  which  Milton  surely  had  read  and 
pondered :  — 

"  So  from  the  East  unto  the  furthest  West 
Shall  Tamburlaine  extend  his  puissant  arm  ; 
The  galleys  and  those  pilling  brigantines 
That  yearly  sail  to  the  Venetian  gulf, 
And  hover  in  the  straits  for  Christians'  wreck, 
Shall  He  at  anchor  in  the  isle  Asant, 
Until  the  Persian  fleet  and  men  of  war 
Sailing  along  the  Oriental  sea 
Hare  fetched  about  the  Indian  continent, 
Even  from  Persepolis  to  Mexico, 
And  thence  unto  the  straits  of  Jubaltar." 

This  is  still  more  Miltonic :  — 

"  As  when  the  seaman  sees  the  Hyades 
Gather  an  army  of  Cimmerian  clouds, 
Auster  and  Aquilon  with  winged  steeds, 

All  fearful  folds  his  sails  and  sounds  the  main." 


54          THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

Spenser,  too,  loved  this  luxury  of  sound,  as  he 
shows  in  such  passages  as  this  :  — 

"  Now  was  Aldebaran  uplifted  high 
Above  the  starry  Cassiopeia's  chair." 

And  I  fancy  he  would  have  put  him  there  to  make 
music,  even  had  it  been  astronomically  impossible, 
but  he  never  strung  such  names  in  long  necklaces, 
as  Marlowe  and  Milton  were  fond  of  doing. 

Was  Marlowe,  then,  a  great  poet  ?  For  such  a 
title  he  had  hardly  range  enough  of  power,  hardly 
reach  enough  of  thought.  But  surely  he  had  some 
of  the  finest  qualities  that  go  to  the  making  of  a 
great  poet ;  and  his  poetic  instinct,  when  he  had 
time  to  give  himself  wholly  over  to  its  guidance, 
was  unerring.  I  say  when  he  had  time  enough,  for 
he,  too,  like  his  fellows,  was  forced  to  make  the 
daily  task  bring  in  the  daily  bread.  We  have  seen 
how  fruitful  his  influence  has  been,  and  perhaps 
his  genius  could  have  no  surer  warrant  than  that 
the  charm  of  it  lingered  in  the  memory  of  poets, 
for  theirs  is  the  memory  of  mankind.  If  we  allow 
him  genius,  what  need  to  ask  for  more  ?  And  per- 
haps it  would  be  only  to  him  among  the  group  of 
dramatists  who  surrounded  Shakespeare  that  we 
should  allow  it.  He  was  the  herald  that  dropped 
dead  in  announcing  the  victory  in  whose  fruits  he 
was  not  to  share. 


Ill 

WEBSTEK 

IN  my  first  lecture  I  spoke  briefly  of  the  defi- 
ciency in  respect  of  Form  which  characterizes  nearly 
all  the  dramatic  literature  of  which  we  are  taking  a 
summary  survey,  till  the  example  of  Shakespeare 
and  the  precepts  of  Ben  Jonson  wrought  their 
natural  effect.  Teleology,  or  the  argument  from 
means  to  end,  the  argument  of  adaptation,  is  not  so 
much  in  fashion  in  some  spheres  of  thought  and 
speculation  as  it  once  was,  but  here  it  applies  ad- 
mirably. We  have  a  piece  of  work,  and  we  know 
the  maker  of  it.  The  next  question  that  we  ask 
ourselves  is  the  very  natural  one  —  how  far  it  shows 
marks  of  intelligent  design.  In  a  play  we  not  only 
expect  a  succession  of  scenes,  but  that  each  scene 
should  lead,  by  a  logic  more  or  less  stringent,  if 
not  to  the  next,  at  any  rate  to  something  that  is  to 
follow,  and  that  all  should  contribute  their  frac- 
tion of  impulse  towards  the  inevitable  catastrophe. 
That  is  to  say,  the  structure  should  be  organic,  with 
a  necessary  and  harmonious  connection  and  rela- 
tion of  parts,  and  not  merely  mechanical,  with  an 
arbitrary  or  haphazard  joining  of  one  part  to  an- 
other. It  is  in  the  former  sense  alone  that  any 
production  can  be  called  a  work  of  art. 

And  when  we  apply  the  word  Form  in  this  sense 
to  some  creation  of  the  mind,  we  imply  that  there 


56          THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

is  a  life,  or,  what  is  still  better,  a  soul  in  it.  That 
there  is  ail  intimate  relation,  or,  at  any  rate,  a  close 
analogy,  between  Form  in  this  its  highest  attribute 
and  Imagination,  is  evident  if  we  remember  that 
the  Imagination  is  the  shaping  faculty.  This  is,  in- 
deed, its  preeminent  function,  to  which  all  others 
are  subsidiary.  Shakespeare,  with  his  usual  depth 
of  insight  and  the  precision  that  comes  of  it,  tells 
us  that  "  imagination  bodies  forth  the  forms  of 
things  unknown."  In  his  maturer  creations  there 
is  generally  some  central  thought  about  which  the 
action  revolves  like  a  moon,  carried  along  with  it 
in  its  appointed  orbit,  and  permitted  the  gambol  of 
a  Ptolemaic  epicycle  now  and  then.  But  the  word 
Form  has  also  more  limited  applications,  as,  for  ex- 
ample, when  we  use  it  to  imply  that  nice  sense  of 
proportion  and  adaptation  which  results  in  Style. 
We  may  apply  it  even  to  the  structure  of  a  verse, 
or  of  a  short  poem  in  which  every  advantage  has 
been  taken  of  the  material  employed,  as  in  Keats's 
"  Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn,"  which  seems  as  perfect 
in  its  outline  as  the  thing  it  so  lovingly  celebrates. 
In  all  these  cases  there  often  seems  also  to  be  some- 
thing intuitive  or  instinctive  in  the  working  of  cer- 
tain faculties  of  the  poet,  and  to  this  we  uncon- 
sciously testify  when  we  call  it  genius.  But  in  the 
technic  of  this  art,  perfection  can  be  reached  only 
by  long  training,  as  was  evident  in  the  case  of  Cole- 
ridge. Of  course,  without  the  genius  all  the  train- 
ing in  the  world  will  produce  only  a  mechanical 
and  lifeless  result ;  but  even  if  the  genius  is  there, 
there  is  nothing  too  seemingly  trifling  to  deserve 


WEBSTER  57 

its  study.  The  "  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church-yard  " 
owes  much  of  the  charm  that  makes  it  precious, 
even  with  those  who  perhaps  undervalue  its  senti- 
ment, to  Gray's  exquisite  sense  of  the  value  of 
vowel  sounds. 

Let  us,  however,  come  down  to  what  is  within 
the  reach  and  under  the  control  of  talent  and  of  a 
natural  or  acquired  dexterity.  And  such  a  thing 
is  the  plot  or  arrangement  of  a  play.  In  this  part 
of  their  business  our  older  playwrights  are  espe- 
cially unskilled  or  negligent.  They  seem  perfectly 
content  if  they  have  a  story  which  they  can  divide 
at  proper  intervals  by  acts  and  scenes,  and  bring  at 
last  to  a  satisfactory  end  by  marriage  or  murder,  as 
the  case  may  be.  A  certain  variety  of  characters 
is  necessary,  but  the  motives  that  compel  and  con- 
trol them  are  almost  never  sufficiently  apparent. 
And  this  is  especially  true  of  the  dramatic  motives, 
as  distinguished  from  the  moral.  The  personages 
are  brought  in  to  do  certain  things  and  perform 
certain  purposes  of  the  author,  but  too  often  there 
seems  to  be  no  special  reason  why  one  of  them 
should  do  this  or  that  more  than  another.  They 
are  servants  of  all  work,  ready  to  be  villains  or 
fools  at  a  moment's  notice  if  required.  The  obli- 
ging simplicity  with  which  they  walk  into  traps 
which  everybody  can  see  but  themselves,  is  some- 
times almost  delightful  in  its  absurdity.  Ben  Jon- 
son  was  perfectly  familiar  with  the  traditional  prin- 
ciples of  construction.  He  tells  us  that  the  fable 
of  a  drama  (by  which  he  means  the  plot  or  action) 
should  have  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end ; 


58         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

and  that  "  as  a  body  without  proportion  cannot  be 
goodly,  no  more  can  the  action,  either  in  comedy 
or  tragedy,  without  his  fit  bounds."  But  he  goes 
on  to  say  "  that  as  every  bound,  for  the  nature  of 
the  subject,  is  esteemed  the  best  that  is  largest, 
till  it  can  increase  no  more  ;  so  it  behoves  the  ac- 
tion in  tragedy  or  comedy  to  be  let  grow  till  the 
necessity  ask  a  conclusion  ;  wherein  two  things  are 
to  be  considered  —  first,  that  it  exceed  not  the 
compass  of  one  day ;  next,  that  there  be  place  left 
for  digression  and  art."  The  weakness  of  our  ear- 
lier playwrights  is  that  they  esteemed  those  bounds 
best  that  were  largest,  and  let  their  action  grow  till 
they  had  to  stop  it. 

Many  of  Shakespeare's  contemporary  poets  must 
have  had  every  advantage  that  he  had  in  practical 
experience  of  the  stage,  and  all  of  them  had  proba- 
bly as  familiar  an  intercourse  with  the  theatre  as  he. 
But  what  a  difference  between  their  manner  of  con- 
structing a  play  and  his  !  In  all  his  dramatic  works 
his  skill  in  this  is  more  or  less  apparent.  In  the 
best  of  them  it  is  unrivalled.  From  the  first  scene 
of  them  he  seems  to  have  beheld  as  from  a  tower 
the  end  of  all.  In  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  for  exam- 
ple, he  had  his  story  before  him,  and  he  follows  it 
closely  enough ;  but  how  naturally  one  scene  is 
linked  to  the  next,  and  one  event  leads  to  another ! 
If  this  play  were  meant  to  illustrate  anything,  it 
would  seem  to  be  that  our  lives  were  ruled  by 
chance.  Yet  there  is  nothing  left  to  chance  in  the 
action  of  the  play,  which  advances  with  the  unvac 
illating  foot  of  destiny.  And  the  characters  are 


WEBSTER  59 

made  to  subordinate  themselves  to  the  interests  of 
the  play  as  to  something  in  which  they  have  all  a 
common  concern.  With  the  greater  part  of  the 
secondary  dramatists,  the  characters  seem  like  un- 
practised people  trying  to  walk  the  deck  of  a  ship 
in  rough  weather,  who  start  for  everywhere  to  bring 
up  anywhere,  and  are  hustled  against  each  other  in 
the  most  inconvenient  way.  It  is  only  when  the 
plot  is  very  simple  and  straightforward  that  there 
is  any  chance  of  smooth  water  and  of  things  going 
on  without  falling  foul  of  each  other.  Was  it  only 
that  Shakespeare,  in  choosing  his  themes,  had  a 
keener  perception  of  the  dramatic  possibilities  of  a 
story  ?  This  is  very  likely,  and  it  is  certain  that 
he  preferred  to  take  a  story  ready  to  his  hand 
rather  than  invent  one.  All  the  good  stories,  in- 
deed, seem  to  have  invented  themselves  in  the  most 
obliging  manner  somewhere  in  the  morning  of  the 
world,  and  to  have  been  camp-followers  when  the 
famous  march  of  mind  set  out  from  the  farthest 
East.  But  where  he  invented  his  plot,  as  hi  the 
"  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  "  and  the  "  Tempest," 
he  is  careful  to  have  it  as  little  complicated  with 
needless  incident  as  possible. 

These  thoughts  were  suggested  to  me  by  the 
gratuitous  miscellaneousness  of  plot  (if  I  may  so 
call  it)  in  some  of  the  plays  of  John  Webster,  con- 
cerning whose  works  I  am  to  say  something  this 
evening,  a  complication  made  still  more  puzzling 
by  the  motiveless  conduct  of  many  of  the  charac- 
ters. When  he  invented  a  plot  of  his  own,  as  in 
his  comedy  of  "  The  Devil's  Law  Case,"  the  improb- 


60        THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

abilities  become  insuperable,  by  which  I  mean 
that  they  are  such  as  not  merely  the  understanding 
but  the  imagination  cannot  get  over.  For  mere 
common-sense  has  little  to  do  with  the  affair. 
Shakespeare  cared  little  for  anachronisms,  or 
whether  there  were  seaports  in  Bohemia  or  not, 
any  more  than  Calderon  cared  that  gunpowder  had 
not  been  invented  centuries  before  the  Christian 
era  when  he  wanted  an  arquebus  to  be  fired,  be- 
cause the  noise  of  a  shot  would  do  for  him  what  a 
silent  arrow  would  not  do.  But,  if  possible,  the 
understanding  should  have  as  few  difficulties  put 
in  its  way  as  possible.  Shakespeare  is  careful  to 
place  his  Ariel  in  the  not  yet  wholly  disenchanted 
Bermudas,  near  which  Sir  John  Hawkins  had  seen 
a  mermaid  not  many  years  before,  and  lays  the 
scene  for  his  Oberon  and  Titania  in  the  dim  re- 
moteness of  legendary  Athens,  though  his  clowns 
are  unmistakably  English,  and  though  he  knew  as 
well  as  we  do  that  Puck  was  a  British  goblin.  In 
estimating  material  improbability  as  distinguished 
from  moral,  however,  we  should  give  our  old  dram- 
atists the  benefit  of  the  fact  that  all  the  world  was 
a  great  deal  farther  away  in  those  days  than  in 
ours,  when  the  electric  telegraph  puts  our  button 
into  the  grip  of  whatever  commonplace  our  planet 
is  capable  of  producing. 

Moreover,  in  respect  of  Webster  as  of  his  fel- 
lows, we  must,  in  order  to  understand  them,  first 
naturalize  our  minds  in  their  world.  Chapman 
makes  Byron  say  to  Queen  Elizabeth :  — 


WEBSTER  61 

"  These  stars, 

Whose  influences  for  this  latitude 
Distilled,  and  wrought  in  with  this  temperate  air, 
And  this  division  of  the  elements, 

Have  with  your  reign  brought  forth  more  worthy  spirits 
For  counsel,  valour,  height  of  wit,  and  art, 
Than  any  other  region  of  the  earth, 
Or  were  brought  forth  to  all  your  ancestors." 

And  this  is  apt  to  be  the  only  view  we  take  of  that 
Golden  Age,  as  we  call  it  fairly  enough  in  one,  and 
that,  perhaps,  the  most  superficial,  sense.  But  it 
was  in  many  ways  rude  and  savage,  an  age  of  great 
crimes  and  of  the  ever-brooding  suspicion  of  great 
crimes.  Queen  Elizabeth  herself  was  the  daughter 
of  a  king  as  savagely  cruel  and  irresponsible  as  the 
Grand  Turk.  It  was  an  age  that  in  Italy  could 
breed  a  Cenci,  and  in  France  could  tolerate  the 
massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  as  a  legitimate  stroke 
of  statecraft.  But  when  we  consider  whether  crime 
be  a  fit  subject  for  tragedy,  we  must  distinguish. 
Merely  as  crime,  it  is  vulgar,  as  are  the  waxen  im- 
ages of  murderers  with  the  very  rope  round  their 
necks  with  which  they  were  hanged.  Crime  be- 
comes then  really  tragic  when  it  merely  furnishes 
the  theme  for  a  profound  psychological  study  of 
motive  and  character.  The  weakness  of  Webster's 
two  greatest  plays  lies  in  this  —  that  crime  is  pre- 
sented as  a  spectacle,  and  not  as  a  means  of  looking 
into  our  own  hearts  and  fathoming  our  own  con- 
sciousness. 

The  scene  of  "  The  Devil's  Law  Case  "  is  Na- 
ples, then  a  viceroyalty  of  Spain,  and  our  ancestors 
thought  anything  possible  in  Italy.  Leonora,  a 


62         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

widow,  has  a  son  and  daughter,  Romelio  and  Jo- 
lenta.  Romelio  is  a  rich  and  prosperous  merchant. 
Jolenta  is  secretly  betrothed  to  Contarino,  an  ap- 
parently rather  spendthrift  young  nobleman,  who 
has  already  borrowed  large  sums  of  money  of  Ro- 
melio on  the  security  of  his  estates.  Romelio  is 
bitterly  opposed  to  his  marrying  Jolenta,  for  rea- 
sons known  only  to  himself  ;  at  least,  no  reason  ap- 
pears for  it,  except  that  the  play  could  not  have 
gone  on  without  it.  The  reason  he  assigns  is  that 
he  has  a  grudge  against  the  nobility,  though  it  ap- 
pears afterwards  that  he  himself  is  of  noble  birth, 
and  asserts  his  equality  with  them.  When  Conta- 
rino, at  the  opening  of  the  play,  comes  to  urge  his 
suit,  and  asks  him  how  he  looks  upon  it,  Romelio 
answers  :  — 

"  Believe  me,  sir,  as  on  the  principal  column 
To  advance  our  house  ;  why,  you  bring  honor  with  you, 
Which  is  the  soul  of  wealth.     I  shall  be  proud 
To  live  to  see  my  little  nephews  ride 
O'  the  upper  hand  of  their  uncles,  and  the  daughters 
Be  ranked  by  heralds  at  solemnities 
Before  the  mother ;  and  all  this  derived 
From  your  nobility.     Do  not  blame  me,  sir, 
If  I  be  taken  with  't  exceedingly  ; 
For  this  same  honor  with  us  citizens 
Is  a  thing  we  are  mainly  fond  of,  especially 
When  it  comes  without  money,  which  is  very  seldom. 
But  as  you  do  perceive  my  present  temper, 
Be  sure  I  'm  yours." 

And  of  this  Contarino  was  sure,  the  irony  of  Ro- 
melio's  speech  having  been  so  delicately  conveyed 
that  he  was  unable  to  perceive  it. 

A  little  earlier  in  this  scene  a  speech  is  put  into 


WEBSTER  63 

the  mouth  of  Romelio  so  characteristic  of  Webster's 
more  sententious  style  that  I  will  repeat  it :  — 

"  O,  my  lord,  lie  not  idle : 
The  chiefest  action  for  a  man  of  great  spirit 
Is  never  to  be  out  of  action.     We  should  think 
The  soul  was  never  put  into  the  body, 
Which  has  so  many  rare  and  curious  pieces 
Of  mathematical  motion,  to  stand  still. 
Virtue  is  ever  sowing  of  her  seeds ; 
I'  th'  trenches  for  the  soldiers,  i'  th'  wakeful  study 
For  the  scholar,  in  the  furrows  of  the  sea 
For  men  of  our  profession,  of  all  which 
Arise  and  spring  up  honour." 

This  recalls  to  mind  the  speech  of  Ulysses  to 
Achilles  in  "  Troilus  and  Cressida,"  a  piece  of  elo- 
quence which,  for  the  impetuous  charge  of  serried 
argument  and  poetic  beauty  of  illustration,  grows 
more  marvellous  with  every  reading.  But  it  is 
hardly  fair  to  any  other  poet  to  let  him  remind  us 
of  Shakespeare. 

Contarino,  on  leaving  Romelio,  goes  to  Leonora, 
the  mother,  who  immediately  conceives  a  violent 
passion  for  him.  He,  by  way  of  a  pretty  compli- 
ment, tells  her  that  he  has  a  suit  to  her,  and  that 
it  is  for  her  picture.  By  this  he  meant  her  daugh- 
ter, but  with  the  flattering  implication  that  you 
would  not  know  the  parent  from  the  child.  Leo- 
nora, of  course,  takes  him  literally,  is  gracious  ac- 
cordingly, and  Contarino  is  satisfied  that  he  has 
won  her  consent  also.  This  scene  gives  occasion 
for  a  good  example  of  Webster's  more  playful  style, 
which  is  perhaps  worth  quoting.  Still  apropos  of 
her  portrait,  Leonora  says :  — 


64         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

"  You  will  enjoin  me  to  a  strange  punishment. 
With  what  a  compelled  face  a  woman  sits 
While  she  is  drawing  !     I  have  noted  divers 
Either  to  feign  smiles,  or  suck  in  the  lips 
To  have  a  little  mouth ;  ruffle  the  cheeks 
To  have  the  dimple  seen ;  and  so  disorder 
The  face  with  affectation,  at  next  sitting 
It  has  not  heen  the  same :  I  have  known  others 
Have  lost  the  entire  fashion  of  their  face 
In  half  an  hour's  sitting.     .     .     . 
But  indeed 

If  ever  I  would  have  mine  drawn  to  th'  life, 
I  'd  have  a  painter  steal  it  at  such  a  time 
I  were  devoutly  kneeling  at  my  prayers  ; 
There  's  then  a  heavenly  beauty  in 't ;  the  soul 
Moves  in  the  superficies." 

The  poet  shows  one  of  his  habitual  weaknesses 
here  in  being  so  far  tempted  by  the  chance  of  say- 
ing a  pretty  thing  as  to  make  somebody  say  it  who 
naturally  would  not.  There  is  really  a  worse  waste 
than  had  it  been  thrown  away.  I  am  inclined  to 
think  men  as  vain  about  their  portraits  as  Leonora 
makes  women  to  be,  or  else  the  story  of  Cromwell's 
wart  would  not  be  so  famous.  However,  Contarino 
goes  away  satisfied  with  the  result  of  his  embassy, 
saying  to  himself  :  — 

"  She  has  got  some  intelligence  how  I  intend  to  marry 
Her  daughter,  and  ingenuously  perceived 
That  by  her  picture,  which  I  begged  of  her, 
I  meant  the  fair  Jolenta." 

There  is  no  possible  reason  why  he  should  not 
have  conveyed  this  intelligence  to  her  himself,  and 
Leonora  must  have  been  ingenious  indeed  to  divine 
it,  except  that  the  plot  would  not  allow  it.  Pre- 
sently another  match  is  found  for  Jolenta  in  Ercole, 


WEBSTER  65 

which  Romelio  favors  for  reasons  again  known  only 
to  himself,  though  he  is  a  noble  quite  as  much  as 
Contarino.  Ercole  is  the  pattern  of  a  chivalrous 
gentleman.  Though  he  at  once  falls  in  love  with 
Jolenta,  according  to  Marlowe's  rule  that  "  he 
never  loved  that  loved  not  at  first  sight,"  and 
though  Romelio  and  the  mother  both  urge  the  im- 
mediate signing  of  the  contract,  he  refuses. 

"Lady,  I  will  do 

A  manly  office  for  you ;  I  will  leave  you 
To  th'  freedom  of  your  own  soul ;  may  it  move 
Whither  Heaven  and  you  please  ! 

I  '11  leave  yon,  excellent  lady,  and  withal 

Leave  a  heart  with  you  so  entirely  yours 

That  I  protest,  had  I  the  least  of  hope 

To  enjoy  you,  though  I  were  to  wait  the  time 

That  scholars  do  in  taking  their  degree 

In  the  noble  arts,  'twere  nothing:   howsoe'er, 

He  parts  from  you,  that  will  depart  from  life 

To  do  you  any  service ;  and  so  humbly 

I  take  my  leave." 

Never,  I  think,  was  more  delicate  compliment 
paid  to  a  woman  than  in  that  fine  touch  which  puts 
the  service  of  her  on  a  level  with  the  "  noble  arts." 
On  this  ground  of  sentiment  idealized  by  devotion, 
Webster  always  moves  with  the  assured  ease  and 
dignified  familiarity  of  a  thorough  gentleman. 

Ercole's  pretension  to  the  hand  of  Jolenta  leads, 
of  course,  to  a  duel  with  Contarino.  They  had 
been  fellow-students  together  at  Padua,  and  the 
scene  in  which  the  preliminaries  of  the  duel  are  ar- 
ranged is  pitched  on  as  nobly  grave  a  key  as  can  be 
conceived.  Lamb  very  justly  calls  it  "  the  model 


66         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

of  a  well-arranged  and  gentlemanlike  difference." 
There  is  no  swagger  and  no  bravado  in  it,  as  is  too 
commonly  apt  to  be  the  case  in  the  plays  of  that 
age.  There  is  something  Spanish  in  its  dignity. 
To  show  what  its  tone  is,  I  quote  the  opening.  It 
is  Contarino  who  first  speaks. 

"  Sir,  my  love  to  you  has  proclaimed  you  one 
Whose  word  was  still  led  by  a  noble  thought, 
And  that  thought  followed  by  as  fair  a  deed. 
Deceive  not  that  opinion.     We  were  students 
At  Padua  together,  and  have  long 
To  th'  world's  eye  shown  like  friends ;  was  it  hearty 
On  your  part  to  me  ? 

Ere.     Unfeigned. 

Con.    You  are  false 

To  the  good  thought  I  held  of  you,  and  now 
Join  the  worst  part  of  man  to  you,  your  malice, 
To  uphold  that  falsehood  :  sacred  innocence 
Is  fled  your  bosom.     Sigiiior,  I  must  tell  you, 
To  draw  the  picture  of  unkindness  truly 
Is  to  express  two  that  have  dearly  loved 
And  fall'n  at  variance ;  'tis  a  wonder  to  me, 
Knowing  my  interest  in  the  fair  Jolenta, 
That  you  should  love  her. 

Ere.     Compare  her  beauty  and  my  youth  together 
And  you  will  find  the  fair  effects  of  love 
No  miracle  at  all." 

They  fight,  and  both  fall  mortally  wounded,  as 
it  is  supposed.  Ercole  is  reported  dead,  and  Con- 
tarino dying,  having  first  made  a  will  in  favor  of 
Jolenta.  Romelio,  disguised  as  a  Jew,  to  avenge 
the  injury  to  himself  in  the  death  of  Ercole,  and  to 
make  sure  that  Contarino  shall  not  survive  to  alter 
his  will,  gets  admission  to  him  by  bribing  his  sur- 
geons, and  stabs  him.  This  saves  his  life  by  re- 
opening the  old  wound  and  letting  forth  its  virus. 


WEBSTER  67 

Of  course  both  he  and  Ercole  recover,  and  both 
conceal  themselves,  though  why,  it  is  hard  to  say, 
except  that  they  are  not  wanted  again  till  towards 
the  end  of  the  play.  Romelio,  unaware  of  his 
mother's  passion  for  Contarino,  tells  her,  as  a  piece 
of  good  news  she  will  be  glad  to  hear,  of  what  he 
has  done.  She  at  once  resolves  on  a  most  horrible 
and  unnatural  revenge.  Her  speech  has  a  kind 
of  savage  grandeur  in  it  which  Webster  was  fond  of 
showing,  for  he  rightly  felt  that  it  was  his  strongest 
quality,  though  it  often  tempted  him  too  far,  till  it 
became  bestial  in  its  ferocity.  It  is  to  be  observed 
that  he  was  on  his  guard  here,  and  gives  us  a  hint, 
as  you  will  see,  in  a  highly  imaginative  passage, 
that  Leonora's  brain  was  turning :  — 

"  I  will  make  you  chief  mourner,  believe  it. 
Never  was  woe  like  mine.     O,  that  my  care 
And  absolute  study  to  preserve  his  life 
Should  be  his  absolute  ruin !     Is  he  gone,  then  ? 
There  is  no  plague  i'  th'  world  can  be  compar'd 
To  impossible  desire  ;  for  they  are  plagu'd 
In  the  desire  itself.     Never,  O,  never 
Shall  I  behold  him  living,  in  whose  life 
I  liv'd  far  sweetlier  than  in  mine  own  ! 
A  precise  curiosity  has  undone  me  :   why  did  I  not 
Make  my  love  known  directly  ?     'T  had  not  been 
Beyond  example  for  a  matron 
To  affect  i'  th'  honourable  way  of  marriage 
So  youthful  a  person.     O,  I  shall  run  mad  I 
For  as  we  love  our  youngest  children  best, 
So  the  last  fruit  of  our  affection, 
Wherever  we  bestow  it,  is  most  strong, 
Most  violent,  most  unresistible, 
Since  't  is  indeed  our  latest  harvest-home, 
Last  merriment  'fore  winter  ;  and  we  widows, 
As  men  report  of  our  best  picture-makers, 


68         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

We  love  the  piece  we  are  in  hand  with  better 

Than  all  the  excellent  work  we  have  done  before. 

And  my  son  has  depriv'd  me  of  all  this  !     Ha.  my  son ! 

I  '11  be  a  Fury  to  him ;  like  an  Amazon  lady, 

I  'd  cut  off  this  right  pap  that  gave  him  suck, 

To  shoot  him  dead.     I  '11  no  more  tender  him, 

Than  had  a  wolf  stol'n  to  my  teat  i'  the  night 

And  robb'd  me  of  my  milk ;   nay,  such  a  creature 

I  should  love  better  far.     Ha,  ha !  what  say  you  ? 

I  do  talk  to  somewhat,  methiiiks  ;  it  may  be 

My  evil  Genius.     Do  not  the  bells  ring  ? 

I  have  a  strange  noise  in  my  head  :   O,  fly  in  pieces ! 

Come,  age,  and  wither  me  into  the  malice 

Of  those  that  have  been  happy  !     Let  me  have 

One  property  more  than  the  devil  of  hell ; 

Let  me  envy  the  pleasure  of  youth  heartily ; 

Let  me  in  this  life  fear  no  kind  of  ill, 

That  have  no  good  to  hope  for ;  let  me  die 

In  the  distraction  of  that  worthy  princess 

Who  loathed  food,  and  sleep,  and  ceremony, 

For  thought  of  losing  that  brave  gentleman 

She  would  fain  have  sav'd,  had  not  a  false  conveyance 

Express'd  him  stubborn-hearted.     Let  me  sink 

Where  neither  man  nor  memory  may  ever  find  me." 

Webster  forestalled  Balzac  by  two  hundred  years 
in  what  he  says  of  a  woman's  last  passion.  The 
revenge  on  which  she  fixes  is,  at  the  cost  of  her 
own  honor,  to  declare  Romelio  illegitimate.  She 
says  that  his  true  father  was  one  Crispiano,  a  Span- 
ish gentleman,  the  friend  of  her  husband.  Natu- 
rally, when  the  trial  comes  on,  Crispiano,  unrecog- 
nized, turns  up  in  court  as  the  very  judge  who  is  to 
preside  over  it.  He  first  gets  the  year  of  the  al- 
leged adultery  fixed  by  the  oath  of  Leonora  and 
her  maid,  and  then  professes  to  remember  that 
Crispiano  had  told  him  of  giving  a  portrait  of  him- 
self to  Leonora,  has  it  sent  for,  and,  revealing  him- 
self, identifies  himself  by  it,  saying,  prettily  enough 


WEBSTER  69 

(those  old  dramatists  have  a  way  of  stating  dry 
facts  so  fancifully  as  to  make  them  blossom,  as  it 
were), 

"  Behold,  I  am  the  shadow  of  this  shadow." 

He  then  proves  an  alibi  at  the  date  in  question 
by  his  friend  Ariosto,  whom  meanwhile  he  has  just 
promoted  to  the  bench  in  his  own  place,  by  virtue 
of  a  convenient  commission  from  the  king  of  Spain, 
which  he  has  in  his  pocket.  At  the  end  of  the 
trial,  the  counsel  for  Leonora  exclaimed  :  — 

<(  Ud's  foot,  we're  spoiled  ; 
Why,  our  client  is  proved  an  honest  woman !  " 

Which  I  cite  only  because  it  reminds  me  to  say 
that  Webster  has  a  sense  of  humor  more  delicate, 
and  a  way  of  showing  it  less  coarse,  than  most  of 
his  brother  dramatists.  Meanwhile  Webster  saves 
Romelio  from  being  hateful  beyond  possibility  of 
condonation  by  making  him  perfectly  fearless.  He 
says  finely :  — 

"  I  cannot  set  myself  so  many  fathom 
Beneath  the  height  of  my  true  heart  as  fear. 

Let  me  continue 

An  honest  man,  which  I  am  very  certain 
A  coward  can  never  be." 

The  last  words  convey  an  important  and  even 
profound  truth.  And  let  me  say  now,  once  for  all, 
that  Webster  abounds,  more  than  any  of  his  con- 
temporaries except  Chapman,  in  these  metaphysical 
apothegms,  and  that  he  introduces  them  naturally, 
while  Chapman  is  too  apt  to  drag  them  in  by  the 


70         THE   OLD   ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

ears.  Here  is  another  as  good,  I  am  tempted  to 
say,  as  many  of  Shakespeare's,  save  only  in  avarice 
of  words.  When  Leonora  is  suborning  Winifred, 
her  maid,  to  aid  her  in  the  plot  against  her  son,  she 

says : — 

"  Come  hither: 

I  have  a  weighty  secret  to  impart, 
But  I  would  have  thee  first  confirm  to  me 
How  I  may  trust  that  thou  canst  keep  my  counsel 
Beyond  death. 

Win.     Why,  mistress,  't  is  your  only  way 
To  enjoin  me  first  that  I  reveal  to  you 
The  worst  act  I  e'er  did  in  all  my  life ; 
One  secret  so  shall  bind  another. 

Leon.  Thou  instruct'st  me 

Most  ingeniously  ;  for  indeed  it  is  not  fit, 
Where  any  act  is  plotted  that  is  naught, 
Any  of  counsel  to  it  should  be  good  ; 
And,  in  a  thousand  ills  have  happ'd  i'  th'  world, 
The  intelligence  of  one  another's  shame 
Hath  wrought  far  more  effectually  than  the  tie 
Of  conscience  or  religion." 

The  plot  has  other  involutions  of  so  unpleasant 
a  nature  now  through  change  of  manners  that  I 
shall  but  allude  to  them.  They  are  perhaps  in- 
tended to  darken  Romelio's  character  to  the  proper 
Websterian  sable,  but  they  certainly  rather  make 
an  eddy  in  the  current  of  the  action  than  hasten  it 
as  they  should. 

I  have  briefly  analyzed  this  play  because  its  plot 
is  not  a  bad  sample  of  a  good  many  others,  and  be- 
cause the  play  itself  is  less  generally  known  than 
Webster's  deservedly  more  famous  "  Vittoria  Co- 
rombona "  and  the  "  Duchess  of  Main."  Before 
coming  to  these,  I  will  mention  his  "  Appius  and 


WEBSTER  71 

Virginia,"  a  spirited,  well-constructed  play  (for 
here  the  simplicity  of  the  incidents  kept  him  with- 
in bounds),  and,  I  think,  as  good  as  any  other 
founded  on  a  Roman  story  except  Shakespeare's. 
It  is  of  a  truly  Roman  temper,  and  perhaps,  there- 
fore, incurs  a  suspicion  of  being  cast  iron.  Web- 
ster, like  Ben  Jonson,  knew,  theoretically  at  least, 
how  a  good  play  should  be  put  together.  In  his 
preface  to  "  The  Devil's  Law-Case  "  he  says  :  "  A 
great  part  of  the  grace  of  this  lay  in  action ;  yet 
can  no  action  ever  be  gracious,  where  the  decency 
of  the  language  and  ingenious  structure  of  the 
scene  arrive  not  to  make  up  a  perfect  harmony." 

"  The  White  Devil,  or  Vittoria  Corombona," 
produced  in  1612,  and  the  "  Duchess  of  Malfi,"  in 
1616,  are  the  two  works  by  which  Webster  is  re- 
membered. In  these  plays  there  is  almost  some- 
thing like  a  fascination  of  crime  and  horror.  Our 
eyes  dazzle  with  them.  The  imagination  that  con- 
ceived them  is  a  ghastly  imagination.  Hell  is 
naked  before  it.  It  is  the  imagination  of  night- 
mare, but  of  no  vulgar  nightmare.  I  would  rather 
call  it  fantasy  than  imagination,  for  there  is  some- 
thing fantastic  in  its  creations,  and  the  fantastic  is 
dangerously  near  to  the  grotesque,  while  the  imagi- 
nation, where  it  is  most  authentic,  is  most  serene. 
Even  to  elicit  strong  emotion,  it  is  the  still  small 
voice  that  is  most  effective ;  nor  is  Webster  un- 
aware of  this,  as  I  shall  show  presently.  Both 
these  plays  are  full  of  horrors,  yet  they  do  move 
pity  and  terror  strongly  also.  We  feel  that  we  are 
under  the  control  of  a  usurped  and  illegitimate 


72         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

power,  but  it  is  power.  I  remember  seeing  a  pic- 
ture in  some  Belgian  church  where  an  angel  makes 
a  motion  to  arrest  the  hand  of  the  Almighty  just  as 
it  is  stretched  forth  in  the  act  of  the  creation.  If 
the  angel  foresaw  that  the  world  to  be  created  was 
to  be  such  a  one  as  Webster  conceived,  we  can 
fully  understand  his  impulse.  Through  both  plays 
there  is  a  vapor  of  fresh  blood  and  a  scent  of 
church-yard  mould  in  the  air.  They  are  what  chil- 
dren call  creepy.  Ghosts  are  ready  at  any  moment : 
they  seem,  indeed,  to  have  formed  a  considerable 
part  of  the  population  in  those  days.  As  an  in- 
stance of  the  almost  ludicrous  way  in  which  they 
were  employed,  take  this  stage  direction  from  Chap- 
man's "  Revenge  of  Bussy  d'  Ambois."  "  Music, 
and  the  ghost  of  Bussy  enters  leading  the  ghosts  of 
the  Guise,  Monsieur,  Cardinal  Guise,  and  Chatil- 
lon  ;  they  dance  about  the  body  and  exeunt."  It 
is  fair  to  say  that  Webster's  ghosts  are  far  from 
comic. 

Let  me  briefly  analyze  "  The  White  Devil."  Vit- 
toria  Corombona,  a  beautiful  woman,  is  married  to 
Camillo,  whom  she  did  not  love.  She  becomes  the 
paramour  of  the  Duke  of  Brachiano,  whose  Duch- 
ess is  the  sister  of  Francesco  de'  Medici  and  of 
Cardinal  Monticelso.  One  of  the  brothers  of  Vit- 
toria,  Flamineo,  is  secretary  to  Brachiano,  and  con- 
trives to  murder  Camillo  for  them.  Vittoria,  as 
there  is  no  sufficient  proof  to  fix  the  charge'  of 
murder  upon  her,  is  tried  for  incontinency,  and 
sent  to  a  house  of  Convertites,  whence  Brachiano 
spirits  her  away,  meaning  to  marry  her.  In  the 


WEBSTER.  73 

mean  while  Brachiano's  Duchess  is  got  out  of 
the  way  by  poison ;  the  lips  of  his  portrait,  which 
she  kisses  every  night  before  going  to  bed,  having 
been  smeared  with  a  deadly  drug  to  that  end. 
There  is  a  Count  Ludovico,  who  had  proffered  an 
unholy  love  to  the  Duchess,  but  had  been  repulsed 
by  her,  and  he  gladly  offers  himself  as  the  minister 
of  vengeance.  Just  as  Brachiano  is  arming  for  a 
tournament  arranged  for  the  purpose  by  his  bro- 
ther-in-law, the  Duke  of  Florence,  Ludovico  poi- 
sons his  helmet,  so  that  he  shortly  dies  in  torture. 
Ludovico  then  murders  Vittoria,  Zanche,  her  Moor- 
ish maid,  and  Flamineo,  and  is  himself  shot  by  the 
guards  of  the  young  Duke  Giovanni,  son  of  Bra- 
chiano, who  break  in  upon  him  just  as  he  has  com- 
pleted his  butchery.  There  are  but  four  characters 
in  the  play  unstained  with  crime  —  Cornelia,  Vit- 
toria's  mother ;  Marcello,  her  younger  son ;  the 
Duchess  of  Brachiano  ;  and  her  son,  the  young 
Duke.  There  are  three  scenes  in  the  play  remark- 
able for  their  effectiveness,  or  for  their  power  in 
different  ways  —  the  trial  scene  of  Vittoria,  the 
death  scene  of  Brachiano,  and  that  of  Vittoria. 
There  is  another  —  the  burial  of  Marcello  —  which 
is  pathetic  as  few  men  have  known  how  to  be  so 
simply  and  with  so  little  effort  as  Webster. 

"  Fran.  dej  Med.     Your  reverend  mother 
Is  grown  a  very  old  woman  in  two  hours. 
I  found  them  winding-  of  Marcello's  corse  ; 
And  there  is  such  a  solemn  melody, 
'Tween  doleful  songs,  tears,  and  sad  elegies  — 
Such  as  old  grandams  watching  hy  the  dead 
Were  wont  to  outwear  the  nights  with  —  that,  believe  me, 


74         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

I  had  no  eyes  to  guide  me  forth  the  room, 
They  were  so  o'ercharg'd  with  water. 

Flam.     I  will  see  them. 

Fran,  de1  Med.  'T  were  much  uncharity  in  you,  for  your  sight 
Will  add  unto  their  tears. 

Flam.     I  will  see  them  : 
They  are  behind  the  traverse  ;  I  '11  discover 
Their  superstitious  howling. 

[Draws  the  curtain.     Cornelia,   Zanche,   and  three  other 
Ladies  discovered  winding  Marcello's  corse.     A.  song. 

Cor.     This  rosemary  is  wither'd ;  pray,  get  fresh  ; 
I  would  have  these  herbs  grow  up  in  his  grave 
When  I  am  dead  and  rotten.     Reach  the  bays ; 
I  '11  tie  a  garland  here  about  his  head ; 
'T  will  keep  my  boy  from  lightning.     This  sheet 
I  have  kept  this  twenty  year,  and  every  day 
Hallow'd  it  with  my  prayers.     I  did  not  think 
He  should  have  wore  it. 

Zanche.     Look  you  who  are  yonder. 

Cor.     O,  reach  me  the  flowers. 

Zanche.     Her  ladyship  's  foolish. 

Lady.     Alas,  her  grief 
Hath  turn'd  her  child  again  ! 

Cor.     You  're  very  welcome  : 
There 's  rosemary  for  you ;  and  rue  for  you  ; 

[To  Flamineo. 

Heart'  s-ease  for  you  ;  I  pray  make  much  of  it: 
I  have  left  more  for  myself. 

Fran,  de1  Med.     Lady,  who  's  this  ? 

Cor.     You  are,  I  take  it,  the  grave-maker. 

Flam.     So. 

Zanche.     'T  is  Flamineo. 

Cor.    Will  you  make  me  such  a  fool  ?     Here 's  a  white  hand  : 
Can  blood  so  soon  be  wash'd  out  ?     Let  me  see  : 
When  screech-owls  croak  upon  the  chimney-tops, 
And  the  strange  cricket  i'  the  oven  sings  and  hops, 
When  yellow  spots  do  on  your  hands  appear, 
Be  certain  then  you  of  a  corse  shall  hear. 
Out  upon 't,  how  't  is  speckled  !  h'as  handled  a  toad,  sure. 
Cowslip-water  is  good  for  the  memory  : 
Pray,  buy  me  three  ounces  of  't. 


WEBSTER  75 

Flam.     I  would  I  were  from  hence. 
Cor.     Do  you  hear,  sir  ? 

I  '11  give  you  a  saying  which  my  grandmother 
Was  wont,  when  she  heard  the  bell  toll,  to  sing  o'er 
Unto  her  lute. 

Flam.     Do,  an  you  will,  do. 

Cor.   '  Call  for  the  robin-redhreast  and  the  wren, 

[Cornelia  doth  this  in  several  forms  of  distraction. 
Since  o'er  shady  groves  they  hover, 
And  with  leaves  and  flowers  do  cover 
The  friendless  bodies  of  unburied  men. 
Call  unto  his  funeral  dole 
The  ant,  the  field-mouse,  and  the  mole, 
To  rear  him  hillocks  that  shall  keep  him  warm, 
And  (when  gay  tombs  are  robb'd)  sustain  no  harm, 
But  keep  the  wolf  far  thence,  that 's  foe  to  men, 
For  with  his  nails  he  '11  dig  them  np  again.' 
They  would  not  bury  him  'cause  he  died  in  a  quarrel ; 
But  I  have  an  answer  for  them  : 

'  Let  holy  church  receive  him  duly, 

Since  he  paid  the  church-tithes  truly.' 
His  weal  this  summ'd,  and  this  is  all  his  store  ; 
This  poor  men  get,  and  great  men  get  no  more. 
Now  the  wares  are  gone,  we  may  shut  up  shop. 
Bless  you  all,  good  people ! 

[Exeunt  Cornelia,  Zanche,  and  Ladies. 
Flam.     I  have  a  strange  thing  in  me,  to  the  which 
I  cannot  give  a  name,  without  it  be 
Compassion.     I  pray,  leave  me." 


In  the  trial  scene  the  defiant  haughtiness  of  Vit- 
toria,  entrenched  in  her  illustrious  birth,  against 
the  taunts  of  the  Cardinal,  making  one  think  of 
Browning's  Ottima,  "magnificent  in  sin,"  excites  a 
sympathy  which  must  check  itself  if  it  would  not 
become  admiration.  She  dies  with  the  same  un- 
conquerable spirit,  not  shaming  in  death  at  least 
the  blood  of  the  Yitelli  that  ran  in  her  veins.  As 


76         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

to  Flamineo,  I  think  it  plain  that  but  for  lago 
he  would  never  have  existed ;  and  it  has  always 
interested  me  to  find  in  Webster  more  obvious 
reminiscences  of  Shakespeare,  without  conscious 
imitation  of  him,  than  in  any  other  dramatist  of  the 
time.  Indeed,  the  style  of  Shakespeare  cannot  be 
imitated,  because  it  is  the  expression  of  his  individ- 
ual genius.  Coleridge  tells  us  that  he  thought  he 
was  copying  it  when  writing  the  tragedy  of  "  Re- 
morse," and  found,  when  all  was  done,  that  he  had 
reproduced  Massinger  instead.  lago  seems  to  me 
one  of  Shakespeare's  most  extraordinary  divina- 
tions. He  has  embodied  in  him  the  corrupt  Italian 
intellect  of  the  Renaissance.  Flamineo  is  a  more 
degraded  example  of  the  same  type,  but  without 
lago's  motives  of  hate  and  revenge.  He  is  a  mere 
incarnation  of  selfish  sensuality.  These  two  trage- 
dies of  "  Vittoria  Corombona  "  and  the  "  Duchess 
of  Malfi  "  are,  I  should  say,  the  most  vivid  pictures 
of  that  repulsively  fascinating  period  that  we  have 
in  English.  Alfred  de  Musset's  "  Lorenzaccio  "  is, 
however,  far  more  terrible,  because  there  the  hor- 
ror is  moral  wholly,  and  never  physical,  as  too 
often  in  Webster. 

There  is  something  in  Webster  that  reminds  me 
of  Victor  Hugo.  There  is  the  same  confusion  at 
times  of  what  is  big  with  what  is  great,  the  same 
fondness  for  the  merely  spectacular,  the  same  in- 
sensibility to  repulsive  details,  the  same  indifference 
to  the  probable  or  even  to  the  natural,  the  same 
leaning  toward  the  grotesque,  the  same  love  of 
effect  at  whatever  cost ;  and  there  is  also  the  same 


WEBSTER  77 

impressiveness  of  result.  Whatever  other  effect 
Webster  may  produce  upon  us,  he  never  leaves  us 
indifferent.  We  may  blame,  we  may  criticise,  as 
much  as  we  will ;  we  may  say  that  all  this  ghastli- 
uess  is  only  a  trick  of  theatrical  blue-light ;  we 
shudder,  and  admire  nevertheless.  We  may  say  he 
is  melodramatic,  that  his  figures  are  magic-lantern 
pictures  that  waver  and  change  shape  with  the  cur- 
tain on  which  they  are  thrown  :  it  matters  not ;  he 
stirs  us  with  an  emotion  deeper  than  any  mere  arti- 
fice could  stir. 


IV 
CHAPMAN 

As  I  turn  from  one  to  another  of  the  old  dra- 
matists, and  see  how  little  is  known  about  their  per- 
sonal history,  I  find  a  question  continually  coming 
back,  invincible  as  a  fly  with  a  strong  sense  of  duty, 
which  I  shall  endeavor  to  fan  away  by  a  little  dis- 
cussion. This  question  is  whether  we  gain  or  lose 
by  our  ignorance  of  the  personal  details  of  their 
history.  Would  it  make  any  difference  in  our  en- 
joyment of  what  they  wrote,  if  we  had  the  means 
of  knowing  that  one  of  them  was  a  good  son,  or 
the  other  a  bad  husband  ?  that  one  was  a  punctual 
paymaster,  and  that  the  other  never  paid  his 
washer-woman  for  the  lustration  of  the  legendary 
single  shirt  without  which  he  could  not  face  a  neg- 
lectful world,  or  hasten  to  the  theatre  with  the 
manuscript  of  the  new  play  for  which  posterity  was 
to  be  more  thankful  than  the  manager?  Is  it  a 
love  of  knowledge  or  of  gossip  that  renders  these 
private  concerns  so  interesting  to  us,  and  makes  us 
willing  to  intrude  on  the  awful  seclusion  of  the 
dead,  or  to  flatten  our  noses  against  the  windows  of 
the  living  ?  The  law  is  more  scrupulous  than  we 
in  maintaining  the  inviolability  of  private  letters. 
Are  we  to  profit  by  every  indiscretion,  by  every 


CHAPMAN  79 

breach  of  confidence  ?  Of  course,  in  whatever  the 
man  himself  has  made  a  part  of  the  record  we  are 
entitled  to  find  what  intimations  we  can  of  his  gen- 
uine self,  of  the  real  man,  veiled  under  the  draper- 
ies of  convention  and  circumstance,  who  was  visible 
for  so  many  years,  yet  perhaps  never  truly  seen, 
obscurely  known  to  himself,  conjectured  even  by 
his  intimates,  and  a  mere  name  to  all  beside.  And 
yet  how  much  do  we  really  know  even  of  men  who 
profess  to  admit  us  to  every  corner  of  their  nature 
—  of  Montaigne?  of  Rousseau?  As  in  the  box 
under  the  table  at  which  the  automaton  chess-player 
sat,  there  is  always  a  closet  within  that  which  is  so 
frankly  opened  to  us,  and  into  this  the  enigma  him- 
self absconds  while  we  are  staring  at  nothing  in 
the  other.  Even  in  autobiographies,  it  is  only  by 
inadvertencies,  by  unconscious  betrayals  when  the 
author  is  off  his  guard,  that  we  make  our  discov- 
eries. In  a  man's  works  we  read  between  the  lines, 
not  always  wisely.  No  doubt  there  is  an  intense 
interest  in  watching  the  process  by  which  a  detec- 
tive critic  like  Sainte-Beuve  dogs  his  hero  or  his 
victim,  as  the  case  may  be,  with  tireless  sympathy 
or  vindictive  sagacity,  tracking  out  clew  after  clew, 
and  constructing  out  of  the  life  a  comment  on  the 
works,  or,  again,  from  the  works  divining  the  char- 
acter. But  our  satisfaction  depends  upon  the  bias 
with  which  the  inquisition  is  conducted,  and,  after 
assisting  at  this  process  in  the  case  of  Chateau- 
briand, for  example,  are  we  sure  that  we  know  the 
man  better,  or  only  what  was  morbid  in  the  man, 
which,  perhaps,  it  was  not  profitable  for  us  to 
know  ? 


80         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

But  is  it  not  after  the  discreditable  particulars 
which  excite  a  correspondingly  discreditable  curios- 
ity that  we  are  eager,  and  these  that  we  read  with 
greatest  zest  ?  So  it  should  seem  if  we  judged  by 
the  fact  that  biography,  and  especially  that  of  men 
of  letters,  tends  more  and  more  towards  these  in- 
decent exposures.  The  concern  of  the  biographer 
should  be  with  the  mind,  and  not  with  the  body  of 
his  victim.  We  are  willing  to  be  taken  into  the 
parlor  and  the  library,  but  may  fairly  refuse  to  be 
dragged  down  to  the  kitchen  or  to  look  into  the 
pantry.  Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson "  does  not 
come  under  this  condemnation,  being  mainly  a  rec- 
ord of  the  great  doctor's  opinions,  and,  since  done 
with  his  own  consent,  is  almost  to  be  called  autobi- 
ographical. There  are  certain  memoirs  after  read- 
ing which  one  blushes  as  if  he  had  not  only  been 
peeping  through  a  key-hole,  but  had  been  caught 
in  the  act.  No  doubt  there  is  a  fearful  truth  in 
Shakespeare's  saying,  — 

"  The  evil  that  men  do  lives  after  them," 

but  I  should  limit  it  to  the  evil  done  by  otherwise 
good  men,  for  it  is  only  in  this  kind  of  evil  that 
others  will  seek  excuse  for  what  they  are  tempted 
to  do,  or  palliation  for  what  they  have  already  done. 
I  like  to  believe,  and  to  think  I  see  reason  for  be- 
lieving, that  it  is  the  good  that  is  in  men  which  is 
immortal,  and  beneficently  immortal,  and  that  the 
sooner  the  perishable  husk  in  which  it  was  envel- 
oped is  suffered  to  perish  and  crumble  away,  the 
sooner  we  shall  know  them  as  they  really  were.  I 


CHAPMAN  81 

remember  how  Longfellow  used  to  laugh  in  his 
kindly  way  when  he  told  the  story  of  the  French 
visitor  who  asked  him  for  some  revelations  intimes 
of  his  domestic  life,  to  be  published  in  a  Paris  news- 
paper. No  man  would  have  lost  less  by  the  most 
staring  light  that  could  have  been  admitted  to 
those  sacred  retreats,  but  he  shrank  instinctively 
from  being  an  accomplice  to  its  admission.  I  am 
not  sure  that  I  ought  to  be  grateful  for  the  probable 
identification  of  the  Dark  Lady  to  whom  twenty-five 
of  Shakespeare's  sonnets  are  addressed,  much  as  I 
should  commend  the  research  and  acuteness  that 
rendered  it  possible.  We  had,  indeed,  more  than 
suspected  that  these  sonnets  had  an  address  within 
the  bills  of  mortality,  for  no  such  red-blooded  flame 
as  this  sometimes  is  ever  burned  on  the  altar  of  the 
Ideal.  But  whoever  she  was,  she  was  unembodied 
so  long  as  she  was  nameless,  she  moved  about  in 
a  world  not  realized,  sacred  in  her  inaccessibility,  a 
fainter  image  of  that  image  of  her  which  had  been 
mirrored  in  the  poet's  eyes  ;  and  this  vulgarization 
of  her  into  flesh  and  blood  seems  to  pull  down  the 
sonnets  from  heaven's  sweetest  air  to  the  turbid 
level  of  our  earthier  apprehension.  Here  is  no 
longer  an  object  for  the  upward,  but  for  the  furtive 
and  sidelong  glance.  A  gentleman  once  told  me 
that  being  compelled  to  part  with  some  family  por- 
traits, he  requested  a  dealer  to  price  that  of  a  col- 
lateral ancestress  by  Gainsborough.  He  thought 
the  sum  offered  surprisingly  small,  and  said  so. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon  for  asking  the  question," 
said  the  dealer,  "  but  business  is  business.    You  are 


82         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

not,  I  understand,  a  direct  descendant  of  this  lady. 
Was  her  name  ever  connected  with  any  scandal  ? 
If  so,  I  could  double  my  offer." 

Somewhere  in  our  in-human  nature  there  must 
be  an  appetite  for  these  unsavory  personalities,  but 
they  are  degrading  in  a  double  sense  —  degrading 
to  hun  whose  secret  is  betrayed,  and  to  him  who 
consents  to  share  in  the  illicit  knowledge  of  it. 
These  things  are  none  of  our  business,  and  yet  it  is 
remarkable  how  scrupulously  exact  even  those  most 
neglectful  in  their  own  affairs  are  in  attending  to 
the  business  of  other  people.  I  think,  on  the  whole, 
that  it  is  fortunate  for  us  that  our  judgment  of 
what  the  old  dramatists  did  should  be  so  little  dis- 
turbed by  any  misinformation  as  to  what  they  were, 
for  to  be  imperfectly  informed  is  to  be  misinformed, 
and  even  to  look  through  contemporary  eyes  is  to 
look  through  very  crooked  glass.  Sometimes  we 
may  draw  a  pretty  infallible  inference  as  to  a  man's 
temperament,  though  not  as  to  his  character,  from 
his  writings.  And  this,  I  think,  is  the  case  with 
Chapman. 

George  Chapman  was  born  at  Hitchin,  in  Hert- 
fordshire, in  1559  probably,  though  Anthony  Wood 
makes  him  two  years  older,  and  died  in  London  en 
the  12th  of  May,  1634.  He  was  buried  in  the 
church-yard  of  St.  Giles  in  the  Fields,  where  the 
monument  put  up  over  him  by  Inigo  Jones  is  still 
standing.  He  was  five  years  older  than  Shake- 
speare, whom  he  survived  for  nearly  twenty  years, 
and  fifteen  years  older  than  Ben  Jonson,  who  out- 
lived him  three  years.  There  is  good  ground  for 


CHAPMAN  83 

believing  that  he  studied  at  both  Universities, 
though  he  took  a  degree  at  neither.  While  there 
he  is  said  to  have  devoted  himself  to  the  classics, 
and  to  have  despised  philosophy.  This  contempt, 
however,  seems  to  me  somewhat  doubtful,  for  he  is 
certainly  the  most  obtrusively  metaphysical  of  all 
our  dramatists.  After  leaving  the  University,  he  is 
supposed  to  have  travelled,  which  is  as  convenient 
a  way  as  any  other  to  fill  up  the  gap  of  sixteen 
years  between  1578,  when  he  ended  his  academic 
studies,  and  1594,  when  we  first  have  notice  of  him 
in  London,  during  which  period  he  vanishes  alto- 
gether. Whether  he  travelled  in  France  and  Italy 
or  not,  he  seems  to  have  become  in  some  way  fa- 
miliar with  the  languages  of  those  countries,  and 
there  is  some  reason  for  thinking  that  he  under- 
stood German  also.  We  have  two  glimpses  of  him 
during  his  life  in  London.  In  1605  he,  with  Jon- 
son  and  Marston,  produced  a  play  called  "  East- 
ward Ho  !  "  Some  "  injurious  reflections  "  on  the 
Scottish  nation  in  it  angered  King  James,  and  the 
authors  were  imprisoned  for  a  few  days  in  the 
Fleet.  Again,  in  1606,  the  French  ambassador, 
Beaumont,  writes  to  his  master :  "  I  caused  certain 
players  to  be  forbid  from  acting  '  The  History  of 
the  Duke  of  Biron ; '  when,  however,  they  saw 
that  the  whole  court  had  left  town,  they  persisted 
in  acting  it ;  nay,  they  brought  upon  the  stage  the 
Queen  of  France  and  Mile,  de  Verneuil.  The 
former  having  first  accosted  the  latter  with  very 
hard  words,  gave  her  a  box  on  the  ear.  At  my 
suit  three  of  them  were  arrested  ;  but  the  principal 


84 

person,  the  author,  escaped."  This  was  Chapman's 
tragedy,  and  in  neither  of  the  editions  printed  two 
years  later  does  the  objectionable  passage  appear. 
It  is  curious  that  this  interesting  illustration  of  the 
history  of  the  English  stage  should  have  been  un- 
earthed from  the  French  archives  by  Yon  Raumer 
in  his  "  History  of  the  Sixteenth  and  Seventeenth 
Centuries." 

Chapman  was  a  man  of  grave  character  and 
regular  life.  We  may,  perhaps,  infer  from  some 
passages  in  his  plays  that  he  heartily  hated  Puri- 
tans. There  are  other  passages  that  might  lead 
one  to  suspect  him  of  a  leaning  towards  Catholi- 
cism, or  at  least  of  regretting  the  schism  of  the 
Reformation.  The  scene  of  "Byron's  Conspiracy" 
and  "  Byron's  Tragedy "  is  laid  in  France,  to  be 
sure,  in  the  tune  of  Henry  IV.,  but  not  to  mention 
that  Chapman's  characters  are  almost  always  the 
mere  mouth-pieces  of  his  own  thought,  there  is  a 
fervor  in  the  speeches  to  which  I  have  alluded 
which  gives  to  them  an  air  of  personal  conviction. 
In  "  Byron's  Tragedy  "  there  is  a  eulogy  of  Philip 
II.  and  his  policy  very  well  worth  reading  by  those 
who  like  to  keep  their  minds  judicially  steady,  for 
it  displays  no  little  historical  insight.  It  certainly 
shows  courage  and  independence  to  have  written 
such  a  vindication  only  eighteen  years  after  the 
Armada,  and  when  national  prejudice  against  Spain 
was  so  strong. 

Chapman's  friendships  are  the  strongest  testi- 
monials we  have  of  his  character.  Prince  Henry, 
whose  untimely  death  may  have  changed  the  course 


CHAPMAN  85 

of  English  history,  and  with  it  that  of  our  own,  was 
his  patron.  So  was  Carr,  Earl  of  Somerset,  whom 
he  did  not  desert  in  ill  fortune.  Inigo  Jones  was 
certainly  his  intimate  friend ;  and  he  is  said  to  have 
been,  though  it  seems  doubtful,  on  terms  of  friendly 
intercourse  with  Bacon.  In  dedicating  his  "  Byron's 
Conspiracy  "  to  Sir  Thomas  Walsingham,  he  speaks 
as  to  an  old  friend.  With  his  fellow-poets  he  ap- 
pears to  have  been  generally  on  good  terms.  His 
long  life  covered  the  whole  of  the  Elizabethan  age 
of  literature,  and  before  he  died  he  might  have  read 
the  earlier  poems  of  Milton. 

He  wrote  seven  comedies  and  eight  tragedies 
that  have  come  down  to  us,  and  probably  others 
that  have  perished.  Nearly  all  his  comedies  are 
formless  and  coarse,  but  with  what  seems  to  me  a 
kind  of  stiff  and  wilful  coarseness,  as  if  he  were 
trying  to  make  his  personages  speak  in  what  he 
supposed  to  be  their  proper  dialect,  in  which  he 
himself  was  unpractised,  having  never  learned  it  in 
those  haunts,  familiar  to  most  of  his  fellow-poets, 
where  it  was  vernacular.  His  characters  seem,  in- 
deed, types,  and  he  frankly  proclaims  himself  an 
idealist  in  the  dedication  of  "The  Revenge  of 
Bussy  d'Ambois  "  to  Sir  Thomas  Howard,  where 
he  says,  "  And  for  the  authentical  truth  of  either 
person  or  action,  who  (worth  the  respecting)  will 
expect  it  in  a  Poem  whose  subject  is  not  truth,  but 
things  like  truth  ?  "  Of  his  comedies,  "  All  Fools  " 
is  by  general  consent  the  best.  It  is  less  lumpish 
than  the  others,  and  is,  on  the  whole,  lively  and 
amusing.  In  his  comedies  he  indulges  himself 


86         THE    OLD   ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

freely  in  all  that  depreciation  of  woman  which  had 
been  so  long  traditional  with  the  sex  which  has  the 
greatest  share  in  making  them  what  they  are.  But 
he  thought  he  was  being  comic,  and  there  is,  on  the 
whole,  no  more  depressing  sight  than  a  naturally 
grave  man  under  that  delusion.  His  notion  of  love, 
too,  is  coarse  and  animal,  or  rather  the  notion  he 
thinks  proper  to  express  through  his  characters. 
And  yet  in  his  comedies  there  are  two  passages, 
one  in  praise  of  love,  and  the  other  of  woman,  cer- 
tainly among  the  best  of  their  kind.  The  first  is  a 
speech  of  Valerio  in  "  All  Fools :  "  — 

"  I  tell  thee  love  is  Nature's  second  sun 
Causing  a  spring  of  virtues  where  he  shines ; 
And  as  without  the  sun,  the  world's  great  eye, 
All  colors,  beauties,  both  of  art  and  nature, 
Are  given  in  vain  to  men,  so  without  love 
All  beauties  bred  in  women  are  in  vain, 
All  virtues  born  in  men  lie  buried  ; 
For  love  informs  them  as  the  sun  doth  colors  ; 
And  as  the  sun,  reflecting  his  warm  beams 
Against  the  earth,  begets  all  fruits  and  flowers, 
So  love,  fair  shining  in  the  inward  man, 
Brings  forth  in  him  the  honorable  fruits 
Of  valor,  wit,  virtue,  and  haughty  thoughts, 
Brave  resolution  and  divine  discourse  : 
O,  't  is  the  paradise,  the  heaven  of  earth ! 
And  didst  thou  know  the  comfort  of  two  hearts 
In  one  delicious  harmony  united', 
As  to  enjoy  one  joy,  think  both  one  thought, 
Live  both  one  life  and  therein  double  life, 

Thou  wouldst  abhor  thy  tongue  for  blasphemy." 

And  now  let  me  read  to  you  a  passage  in  praise 
of  women   from  "  The    Gentleman  Usher."     It  is 


CHAPMAN  87 

not  great  poetry,  but  it  has  fine  touches  of  discrimi- 
nation both  in  feeling  and  expression :  — 

"  Let  no  man  value  at  a  little  price 

A  virtuous  woman's  counsel ;  her  winged  spirit 
Is  feathered  oftentimes  with  heavenly  words, 
And,  like  her  heauty,  ravishing  and  pure  ; 
The  weaker  hocly  still  the  stronger  soul. 

O  what  a  treasure  is  a  virtuous  wife, 
Discreet  and  loving !   not  one  gift  on  earth 
Makes  a  man's  life  so  highly  hound  to  heaven ; 
She  gives  him  douhle  forces,  to  endure 
And  to  enjoy,  by  being  one  with  him,'' 

Then,  after  comparing  her  with  power,  wealth, 
music,  and  delicate  diet,  which  delight  but  imper- 
fectly, — 

"  But  a  true  wife  both  sense  and  soul  delights, 
And  mixeth  not  her  good  with  any  ill. 
All  store  without  her  leaves  a  man  but  poor, 
And  with  her  poverty  is  exceeding  store." 

Chapman  himself,  in  a  passage  of  his  "  Revenge 
of  Bussy  d'Ambois,"  condemns  the  very  kind  of 
comedy  he  wrote  as  a  concession  to  public  taste :  — 

"  Nay,  we  must  now  have  nothing  brought  on  stages 
But  puppetry,  and  pied  ridiculous  antics  ; 
Men  thither  come  to  laugh  and  feed  fool -fat, 
Check  at  all  goodness  there  as  being  profaned ; 
When  wheresoever  goodness  comes,  she  makes 
The  place  still  sacred,  though  with  other  feet 
Never  so  much  't  is  scandaled  and  polluted. 
Let  me  learn  anything  that  fits  a  man, 
In  any  stables  shown,  as  well  as  stages." 

Of  his  tragedies,  the  general  judgment  has  pro- 
nounced "  Byron's  Conspiracy  "  and  "  Byron's  Tra- 
gedy "  to  be  the  finest,  though  they  have  less  genu- 


88         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

ine  poetical  ecstasy  than  his  "  d'Ambois."  The 
"  Tragedy  of  Chabot,  Admiral  of  France,"  is  almost 
wholly  from  his  hand,  as  all  its  editors  agree,  and 
as  is  plain  from  internal  evidence,  for  Chapman 
has  some  marked  peculiarities  of  thought  and  style 
which  are  unmistakable.  Because  Shirley  had  some 
obscure  share  in  it,  it  is  printed  with  his  works, 
and  omitted  by  the  latest  editor  of  Chapman.  Yet 
it  is  far  more  characteristic  of  him  than  "  Alphon- 
sus,"  or  "  Caesar  and  Pompey."  The  character  of 
Chabot  has  a  nobility  less  prompt  to  vaunt  itself, 
less  conscious  of  itself,  less  obstreperous,  I  am 
tempted  to  say,  than  is  common  with  Chapman. 
There  is  one  passage  in  the  play  which  I  will  quote, 
because  of  the  plain  allusion  in  it  to  the  then  com- 
paratively recent  fate  of  Lord  Bacon.  I  am  not 
sure  whether  it  has  been  before  remarked  or  not. 
The  Lord  Chancellor  of  France  is  impeached  of  the 
same  crimes  with  Bacon.  He  is  accused  also  of 
treacherous  cruelty  to  Chabot,  as  Bacon  was  re- 
proached for  ingratitude  to  Essex.  He  is  sentenced 
like  him  to  degradation  of  rank,  to  a  heavy  fine, 
and  to  imprisonment  at  the  King's  pleasure.  Like 
Bacon,  again,  he  twice  confesses  his  guilt  before 
sentence  is  passed  on  him,  and  throws  himself  on 
the  King's  mercy  :  — 

"  Hear  me,  great  Judges ;  if  you  have  not  lost 
For  my  sake  all  your  charities,  I  beseech  you 
Let  the  King  know  my  heart  is  full  of  penitence  ; 
Calm  his  high-going  sea,  or  in  that  tempest 
I  ruin  to  eternity.     0,  my  lords, 
Consider  your  own  places  and  the  helms 
You  sit  at ;  while  with  all  your  providence 


CHAPMAN  89 

You  steer,  look  forth  and  see  devouring  quicksands  ! 

My  ambition  now  is  punished,  and  my  pride 

Of  state  and  greatness  falling  into  nothing  ; 

I,  that  had  never  time,  through  vast  employments, 

To  think  of  Heaven,  feel  His  revengeful  wrath 

Boiling  my  blood  and  scorching  up  my  entrails. 

There  's  doomsday  in  my  conscience,  black  and  horrid, 

For  my  abuse  of  justice  ;  but  no  stings 

Prick  with  that  terror  as  the  wounds  I  made 

Upon  the  pious  Admiral.     Some  good  man 

Bear  my  repentance  thither  ;  he  is  merciful, 

And  may  incline  the  King  to  stay  his  lightning, 

Which  threatens  my  confusion,  that  my  free 

Resign  of  title,  office,  and  what  else 

My  pride  look'd  at,  would  buy  my  poor  life's  safety  ; 

Forever  banish  me  the  Court,  and  let 

Me  waste  my  life  far-off  in  some  mean  village." 

After  the  Chancellor's  sentence,  his  secretaiy 
says :  — 

"  I  could  have  wished  him  fall  on  softer  ground 
For  his  good  parts." 

Bacon's  monument,  in  St.  Michael's  Church  at  St. 
Alban's,  was  erected  by  his  secretary,  Sir  Thomas 
Meautys.  Bacon  did  not  appear  at  his  trial ;  but 
there  are  several  striking  parallels  between  his  let- 
ters of  confession  and  the  speech  you  have  just 
heard. 

Another  posthumously  published  tragedy  of 
Chapman's,  the  "  Revenge  for  Honor,"  is,  in  con- 
ception, the  most  original  of  them  all,  and  the  plot 
seems  to  be  of  his  own  invention.  It  has  great  im- 
probabilities, but  as  the  story  is  Oriental,  we  find  it 
easier  to  forgive  them.  It  is,  on  the  whole,  a  very 
striking  play,  and  with  more  variety  of  character 
in  it  than  is  common  with  Chapman. 


90         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

In  general  he  seems  to  have  been  led  to  the 
choice  of  his  heroes  (and  these  sustain  nearly  the 
whole  weight  of  the  play  in  which  they  figure)  by 
some  half-conscious  sympathy  of  temperament. 
They  are  impetuous,  have  an  overweening  self-con- 
fidence, and  an  orotund  way  of  expressing  it  that 
fitted  them  perfectly  to  be  the  mouth-pieces  for  an 
eloquence  always  vehement  and  impassioned,  some- 
times rising  to  a  sublimity  of  self-assertion.  Where 
it  is  fine,  it  is  nobly  fine,  but  too  often  it  raves  itself 
into  a  kind  of  fury  recalling  Hamlet's  word  "  robus- 
tious," and  seems  to  be  shouted  through  a  speaking- 
trumpet  in  a  gale  of  wind.  He  is  especially  fond  of 
describing  battles,  and  the  rush  of  his  narration  is 
then  like  a  charge  of  cavalry.  Of  his  first  tragedy, 
"  Bussy  d'Ambois,"  Dry  den  says,  with  that  mix- 
ture of  sure  instinct  and  hasty  judgment  which 
makes  his  prose  so  refreshing :  "  I  have  sometimes 
wondered  in  the  reading  what  has  become  of  those 
glaring  colors  which  amazed  me  in  '  Bussy  d'Am- 
bois '  upon  the  theatre ;  but  when  I  had  taken  up 
what  I  supposed  a  falling  star,  I  found  I  had  been 
cozened  with  a  jelly,  nothing  but  a  cold  dull  mass, 
which  glittered  no  longer  than  it  was  shooting  ;  a 
dwarfish  thought  dressed  up  in  gigantic  words,  re- 
petition in  abundance,  looseness  of  expression,  and 
gross  hyperbole  ;  the  sense  of  one  line  expanded 
prodigiously  into  ten  ;  and,  to  sum  up  all,  incorrect 
English,  and  a  hideous  mingle  of  false  poetry  and 
true  nonsense ;  or,  at  best,  a  scantling  of  wit  which 
lay  gasping  for  life  and  groaning  beneath  a  heap 
of  rubbish." 


CHAPMAN  91 

There  is  hyperbole  in  Chapman,  and  perhaps 
Dryden  saw  it  the  more  readily  and  disliked  it  the 
more  that  his  own  tragedies  are  full  of  it.  But 
Dryden  was  always  hasty,  not  for  the  first  time  in 
speaking  of  Chapman.  I  am  pretty  safe  in  say- 
ing that  he  had  probably  only  run  his  eye  over 
"Bussy  d'Ambois,"  and  that  it  did  not  happen 
to  fall  on  any  of  those  finely  inspired  passages 
which  are  not  only  more  frequent  in  it  than  in 
any  other  of  Chapman's  plays,  but  of  a  more 
purely  poetical  quality.  Dryden  was  irritated  by 
a  consciousness  of  his  own  former  barbarity  of 
taste,  which  had  led  him  to  prefer  Sylvester's 
translation  of  Du  Bartas.  What  he  says  as  to  the 
success  of  "  Bussy  d'Ambois  "  on  the  stage  is  in- 
teresting. 

In  saying  that  the  sense  of  "one  line  is  prodi- 
giously expanded  into  ten,"  Dryden  certainly  puts 
his  finger  on  one  of  Chapman's  faults.  He  never 
knew  when  to  stop.  But  it  is  not  true  that  the 
sense  is  expanded,  if  by  that  we  are  to  understand 
that  Chapman  watered  his  thought  to  make  it  fill 
up.  There  is  abundance  of  thought  in  him,  and 
of  very  suggestive  thought  too,  but  it  is  not  always 
in  the  right  place.  He  is  the  most  sententious  of 
our  poets  —  sententious  to  a  fault,  as  we  feel  in 
his  continuation  of  "Hero  and  Leander."  In  his 
annotations  to  the  sixteenth  book  of  his  transla- 
tion of  the  Iliad,  he  seems  to  have  been  thinking 
of  himself  in  speaking  of  Homer.  He  says: 
"And  here  have  we  ruled  a  case  against  our  plain 
and  smug  writers,  that,  because  their  own  un- 


92         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

wieldiness  will  not  let  them  rise  themselves,  would 
have  every  man  grovel  like  them.  .  .  .  But  herein 
this  case  is  ruled  against  such  men  that  they  affirm 
these  hyperthetical  or  superlative  sort  of  expres- 
sions and  illustrations  are  too  bold  and  bumbasted, 
and  out  of  that  word  is  spun  that  which  they  call 
our  fustian,  their  plain  writing  being  stuff  nothing 
so  substantial,  but  such  gross  sowtege  or  hairpatch 
as  every  goose  may  eat  oats  through.  .  .  .  But  the 
chief  end  why  I  extend  this  annotation  is  only  to 
entreat  your  note  here  of  Homer's  manner  of  writ- 
ing, which,  to  utter  his  after-store  of  matter  and 
variety,  is  so  presse  and  puts  on  with  so  strong  a 
current  that  it  far  overruns  the  most  laborious 
pursuer  if  he  have  not  a  poetical  foot  and  Poesy's 
quick  eye  to  guide  it." 

Chapman  has  indeed  a  "great  after-store  of 
matter"  which  encumbers  him,  and  does  sometimes 
"far  overrun  the  most  laborious  pursuer,"  but 
many  a  poetical  foot,  with  Poesy's  quick  eye  to 
guide  it,  has  loved  to  follow.  He  has  kindled  an 
enthusiasm  of  admiration  such  as  no  other  poet  of 
his  day  except  Shakespeare  has  been  able  to  kin- 
dle. In  this  very  play  of  "Bussy  d'Ambois" 
there  is  a  single  line  of  which  Charles  Lamb  says 
that  "  in  all  poetry  I  know  nothing  like  it." 
When  Chapman  is  fine,  it  is  in  a  way  all  his  own. 
There  is  then  an  incomparable  amplitude  in  his 
style,  as  when,  to  quote  a  phrase  from  his  transla- 
tion of  Homer,  the  Lightener  Zeus  "lets  down  a 
great  sky  out  of  heaven."  There  is  a  quality  of 
northwestern  wind  in  it,  which,  if  sometimes  too 


CHAPMAN  93 

blusterous,  is  yet  taken  into  the  lungs  with  an  ex- 
hilarating expansion.  Hyperbole  is  overshooting 
the  mark.  No  doubt  Chapman  sometimes  did 
this,  but  this  excess  is  less  depressing  than  its 
opposite,  and  at  least  proves  vigor  in  the  bowman. 
His  bow  was  like  that  of  Ulysses,  which  none 
could  bend  but  he,  and  even  where  the  arrow  went 
astray,  it  sings  as  it  flies,  and  one  feels,  to  use  his 
own  words,  as  if  it  were 

"the  shaft 

Shot  at  the  sun  by  angry  Hercules, 
And  into  splinters  by  the  thunder  broken." 

Dryden  taxes  Chapman  with  "incorrect  Eng- 
lish." This  is  altogether  wrong.  His  English  is 
of  the  best,  and  far  less  licentious  than  Dryden' s 
own,  which  was  also  the  best  of  its  kind.  Chap- 
man himself  says  (or  makes  Montsurry  in  "Bussy 
d'Ambois "  say  for  him):  — 

"  Worthiest  poets 

Shun  common  and  plebeian  forms  of  speech, 
Every  illiberal  and  affected  phrase, 
To  clothe  their  matter,  and  together  tie 
Matter  and  form  with  art  and  decency." 

And  yet  I  should  say  that  if  Chapman's  Eng- 
lish had  any  fault,  it  comes  of  his  fondness  for 
homespun  words,  and  for  images  which,  if  not 
essentially  vulgar,  become  awkwardly  so  by  being 
forced  into  company  where  they  feel  themselves 
out  of  place.  For  example,  in  the  poem  which 
prefaces  his  Homer,  full  of  fine  thought,  fitly  ut- 
tered in  his  large  way,  he  suddenly  compares  the 
worldlings  he  is  denouncing  to  "an  itching  horse 


94         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

leaning  to  a  block  or  a  May-pole."  He  would 
have  justified  himself,  I  suppose,  by  Homer's  hav- 
ing compared  Ajax  to  an  ass,  for  I  think  he  really 
half  believed  that  the  spirit  of  Homer  had  entered 
into  him  and  replaced  his  own.  So  in  "Bussy,"  — 

"  Love  is  a  razor  cleansing  if  well  used, 
But  fetcheth  blood  still  being  the  least  abused." 

But  I  think  the  incongruity  is  to  be  explained  as 
an  unconscious  reaction  (just  as  we  see  men  of 
weak  character  fond  of  strong  language)  against  a 
partiality  he  felt  in  himself  for  costly  phrases. 
His  fault  is  not  the  purple  patch  upon  frieze,  but 
the  patch  of  frieze  upon  purple.  In  general,  one 
would  say  that  his  style  was  impetuous  like  the 
man  himself,  and  wants  the  calm  which  is  the  most 
convincing  evidence  of  great  power  that  has  no 
misgivings  of  itself.  I  think  Chapman  figured 
forth  his  own  ideal  in  his  "Byron:  "  — 

"  Give  me  a  spirit  that  on  this  life's  rough  sea 
Loves  to  have  his  sails  filled  with  a  lusty  wind, 
Even  till  his  sail-yards  tremble,  his  masts  crack, 
And  his  rapt  ship  run  on  her  side  so  low 
That  she  drinks  water  and  her  keel  ploughs  air. 
There  is  no  danger  to  a  man  that  knows 
What  life  and  death  is ;   there  's  not  any  law 
Exceeds  his  knowledge  ;  neither  is  it  lawful 
That  he  should  stoop  to  any  other  law.' ' 

Professor  Minto  thinks  that  the  rival  poet  of 
whom  Shakespeare  speaks  in  his  eighty-sixth  son- 
net was  Chapman,  and  enough  confirmation  of 
this  theory  may  be  racked  out  of  dates  and  other 
circumstances  to  give  it  at  least  some  probability. 


CHAPMAN  95 

However  this  may  be,  the  opening  line  of  the  son- 
net contains  as  good  a  characterization  of  Chap- 
man's style  as  if  it  had  been  meant  for  him:  — 

"  Was  it  the  proud  full  sail  of  his  great  verse  ?  " 

I  have  said  that  Chapman  was  generally  on 
friendly  terms  with  his  brother  poets.  But  there 
is  a  passage  in  the  preface  to  the  translation  of  the 
Iliad  which  marks  an  exception.  He  says:  "And 
much  less  I  weigh  the  frontless  detractions  of 
some  stupid  ignorants,  that,  no  more  knowing  me 
than  their  beastly  ends,  and  I  ever  (to  my  know- 
ledge) blest  from  their  sight,  whisper  behind  me 
vilify  ings  of  my  translation,  out  of  the  French 
affirming  them,  when,  both  in  French  and  all  other 
languages  but  his  own,  our  with-all-skill-enriched 
Poet  is  so  poor  and  unpleasing  that  no  man  can 
discern  from  whence  flowed  his  so  generally  given 
eminence  and  admiration."  I  know  not  who  was 
intended,  but  the  passage  piques  my  curiosity.  In 
what  is  said  about  language  there  is  a  curious  par- 
allel with  what  Ben  Jonson  says  of  Shakespeare, 
and  the  "generally  given  eminence  and  admira- 
tion" applies  to  him  also.  The  "with-all-skill- 
enriched"  reminds  me  of  another  peculiarity  of 
Chapman  —  his  fondness  for  compound  words.  He 
seems  to  have  thought  that  he  condensed  more 
meaning  into  a  phrase  if  he  dovetailed  all  its  words 
together  by  hyphens.  This  sometimes  makes  the 
verses  of  his  translation  of  Homer  difficult  to  read 
musicall}',  if  not  metrically. 

Chapman  has  been  compared  with  Seneca,  but 


96         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

I  see  no  likeness  in  their  manner  unless  we  force 
an  analogy  between  the  rather  braggart  Hercules 
of  the  one  and  d'Ambois  of  the  other.  The  most 
famous  passage  in  Seneca's  tragedies  is,  I  suppose, 
the  answer  of  Medea  when  asked  what  remains  to 
her  in  her  desertion  and  danger:  "Medea  super- 
est."  This  is  as  unlike  Chapman  as  he  is  unlike 
Marlowe  or  Webster.  His  genius  never  could 
have  compressed  itself  into  so  laconic  a  casket. 
Here  would  have  been  a  chance  for  him  to  dilate 
like  Teneriffe  or  Atlas,  and  he  would  have  done  it 
ample  justice.  If  ever  there  was  a  case  in  which 
Buff  on 's  saying  that  the  style  is  the  man  fitted  ex- 
actly, it  is  in  that  of  Chapman.  Perhaps  I  ought 
to  have  used  the  word  "  mannerism "  instead  of 
"  style,"  for  Chapman  had  not  that  perfect  control  of 
his  matter  which  "  style  "  implies.  On  the  contrary, 
his  matter  seems  sometimes  to  do  what  it  will  with 
him,  which  is  the  characteristic  of  mannerism.  I 
can  think  of  no  better  example  of  both  than  Sterne, 
alternately  victim  of  one  and  master  of  the  other. 
His  mannerism  at  last  becomes  irritating  affecta- 
tion, but  when  he  throws  it  off,  his  style  is  perfect 
in  simplicity  of  rhythm.  There  is  no  more  mas- 
terly page  of  English  prose  than  that  in  the  "  Sen- 
timental Journey "  describing  the  effect  of  the 
chorus,  "O  Cupid,  King  of  Gods  and  Men,"  on 
the  people  of  Abdera. 

As  a  translator,  and  he  translated  a  great  deal 
besides  Homer,  Chapman  has  called  forth  the  most 
discordant  opinions.  It  is  plain  from  his  prefaces 
and  annotations  that  he  had  discussed  with  himself 


CHAPMAN  97 

the  various  theories  of  translation,  and  had  chosen 
that  which  prefers  the  spirit  to  the  letter.  "  I  dis- 
sent," he.  says,  speaking  of  his  translation  of  the 
Iliad,  "from  all  other  translators  and  interpreters 
that  ever  essayed  exposition  of  this  miraculous 
poem,  especially  where  the  divine  rapture  is  most 
exempt  from  capacity  in  grammarians  merely  and 
grammatical  critics,  and  where  the  inward  sense 
or  soul  of  the  sacred  muse  is  only  within  eyeshot 
of  a  poetical  spirit's  inspection."  This  rapture, 
however,  is  not  to  be  found  in  his  translation  of 
the  Odyssey,  he  being  less  in  sympathy  with  the 
quieter  beauties  of  that  exquisite  poem.  Cervantes 
said  long  ago  that  no  poet  is  translatable,  and  he 
said  truly,  for  his  thoughts  will  not  sing  in  any 
language  but  their  own.  Even  where  the  languages 
are  of  common  parentage,  like  English  and  Ger- 
man, the  feat  is  impossible.  Who  ever  saw  a 
translation  of  one  of  Heine's  songs  into  English 
from  which  the  genius  had  not  utterly  vanished? 
We  cannot  translate  the  music ;  above  all,  we  can- 
not translate  the  indefinable  associations  which 
have  gathered  round  the  poem,  giving  it  more 
meaning  to  us,  perhaps,  than  it  ever  had  for  the 
poet  himself.  In  turning  it  into  our  own  tongue 
the  translator  has  made  it  foreign  to  us  for  the 
first  time.  Why,  we  do  not  like  to  hear  any  one 
read  aloud  a  poem  that  we  love,  because  he  trans- 
lates it  into  something  unfamiliar  as  he  reads. 
But  perhaps  it  is  fair,  and  this  is  sometimes  for- 
gotten, to  suppose  that  a  translation  is  intended 
only  for  such  as  have  no  knowledge  of  the  original, 


98         THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

and  to  whom  it  will  be  a  new  poem.  If  that  be 
so,  there  can  be  no  question  that  a  free  repro- 
duction, a  transfusion  into  the  moulds  of  another 
language,  with  an  absolute  deference  to  its  asso- 
ciations, whether  of  the  ear  or  of  the  memory,  is 
the  true  method.  There  are  no  more  masterly  illus- 
trations of  this  than  the  versions  from  the  Greek, 
Persian,  and  Spanish  of  the  late  Mr.  Fitzgerald. 
His  translations,  however  else  they  may  fail,  make 
the  same  vivid  impression  on  us  that  an  original 
would.  He  has  aimed  at  translating  the  genius, 
in  short,  letting  all  else  take  care  of  itself,  and  has 
succeeded.  Chapman  aimed  at  the  same  thing, 
and  I  think  has  also  succeeded.  You  all  remem- 
ber Keats 's  sonnet  on  first  looking  in  his  Homer. 

"  Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken." 

Whether  Homer  or  not,  his  translation  is  at  least 
not  Milton,  as  those  in  blank  verse  strive  without 
much  success  to  be.  If  the  Greek  original  had 
been  lost,  and  we  had  only  Chapman,  would  it  not 
enable  us  to  divine  some  of  the  chief  qualities  of 
that  original?  I  think  it  would;  and  I  think  this 
perhaps  the  fairest  test.  Commonly  we  open  a 
translation  as  it  were  the  door  of  a  house  of  mourn- 
ing. It  is  the  burial-service  of  our  poet  that  is 
going  on  there.  But  Chapman's  poem  makes  us 
feel  as  if  Homer  late  in  life  had  married  an  Eng- 
lish wife,  and  we  were  invited  to  celebrate  the 
coming  of  age  of  their  only  son.  The  boy,  as  our 
country  people  say,  and  as  Chapman  would  have 


CHAPMAN  99 

said,  favors  his  mother;  there  is  very  little  Greek 
in  him ;  and  yet  a  trick  of  the  gait  now  and  then, 
and  certain  tones  of  voice,  recall  the  father.  If 
not  so  tall  as  he,  and  without  his  dignity,  he  is  a 
fine  stalwart  fellow,  and  looks  quite  able  to  make 
his  own  way  in  the  world.  Yes,  in  Chapman's 
poem  there  is  life,  there  is  energy,  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  them.  Did  not  Dryden  say  admi- 
rably well  that  it  was  such  a  poem  as  we  might 
fancy  Homer  to  have  written  before  he  arrived  at 
years  of  discretion?  Its  defect  is,  I  should  say, 
that  in  it  Homer  is  translated  into  Chapman 
rather  than  into  English. 

Chapman  is  a  poet  for  intermittent  rather  than 
for  consecutive  reading.  He  talks  too  loud  and  is 
too  emphatic  for  continuous  society.  But  when 
you  leave  him,  you  feel  that  you  have  been  in  the 
company  of  an  original,  and  hardly  know  why  you 
should  not  say  a  great  man.  From  his  works, 
one  may  infer  an  individuality  of  character  in  him 
such  as  we  can  attribute  to  scarce  any  other  of 
his  contemporaries,  though  originality  was  far 
cheaper  then  than  now.  A  lofty,  impetuous  man, 
ready  to  go  off  without  warning  into  what  he 
called  a  "holy  fury,"  but  capable  of  inspiring  an 
almost  passionate  liking.  Had  only  the  best  parts 
of  what  he  wrote  come  down  to  us,  we  should  have 
reckoned  him  a  far  greater  poet  than  we  can  fairly 
call  him.  His  fragments  are  truly  Cyclopean. 


BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER 

THE  names  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  as 
inseparably  linked  together  as  those  of  Castor  and 
Pollux.  They  are  the  double  stars  of  our  poetical 
firmament,  and  their  beams  are  so  indissolubly 
mingled  that  it  is  in  vain  to  attempt  any  division 
of  them  that  shall  assign  to  each  his  rightful  share. 
So  long  as  they  worked  in  partnership,  Jasper 
Mayne  says  truly  that  they  are 

"  both  so  knit 

That  no  man  knows  where  to  divide  their  wit, 
Much  less  their  praise." 

William  Cartwright  says  of  Fletcher  :  — 

"  That 't  was  his  happy  fault  to  do  too  much  ; 
Who  therefore  wisely  did  submit  each  birth 
To  knowing  Beaumont,  ere  it  did  come  forth, 
And  made  him  the  sobriety  of  his  wit." 

And  Richard  Brome  also  alludes  to  the  copious 
ease  of  Fletcher,  whom  he  had  known :  — 

"  Of  Fletcher  and  his  works  I  speak. 
His  works !  says  Momus,  nay,  his  plays  you  'd  say ! 
Thou  hast  said  right,  for  that  to  him  was  play 
Which  was  to  others'  brains  a  toil." 

The  general  tradition  seems  to  have  been  that 
Beaumont  contributed  the  artistic  judgment,  and 
Fletcher  the  fine  frenzy.  There  is  commonly  a 
grain  of  truth  in  traditions  of  this  kind.  In  the 


BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  101 

plays  written  by  the  two  poets  conjointly,  we  may 
find  an  intellectual  entertainment  in  assigning  this 
passage  to  one  and  that  to  the  other,  but  we  can 
seldom  say  decisively  "This  is  Beaumont's,"  or 
"That  is  Fletcher's,"  though  we  may  find  toler- 
ably convincing  arguments  for  it. 

We  have,  it  is  true,  some  grounds  on  which  we 
may  safely  form  a  conclusion  as  to  the  individual 
characteristics  of  Fletcher,  because  a  majority  of 
the  plays  which  go  under  their  joint  names  were 
written  by  him  alone  after  Beaumont's  death.  In 
these  I  find  a  higher  and  graver  poetical  quality, 
and  I  think  a  riper  grain  of  sentiment,  than  in 
any  of  the  others.  In  running  my  eye  along  the 
margin,  I  observe  that  by  far  the  greater  number 
of  the  isolated  phrases  I  have  marked,  whether  for 
poetical  force  or  felicity,  but  especially  for  pictur- 
esqueness,  and  for  weight  of  thought,  belong  to 
Fletcher.  I  should  never  suspect  Beaumont's 
hand  in  such  verses  as  these  from  "  Bonduca "  (a 
play  wholly  Fletcher's):  — 

"  Ten  years  of  bitter  nights  and  heavy  marches, 

When  many  a  frozen  storm  sung  through  my  cuirass, 
And  made  it  doubtful  whether  that  or  I 
Were  the  more  stubborn  metal." 

Where  I  come  upon  a  picturesque  passage  in  the 
joint  plays,  I  am  apt  to  think  it  Fletcher's :  so  too 
where  there  is  a  certain  exhilaration  and  largeness 
of  manner,  and  an  ardor  that  charges  its  words 
with  imagination  as  they  go,  or  with  an  enthusi- 
asm that  comes  very  near  it  in  its  effect.  Take 
this  from  the  same  play :  — 


102      THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

"  The  gods  of  Rome  fight  for  ye ;  loud  fame  calls  ye, 
Pitched  on  the  topless  Apennine,  and  blows 
To  all  the  underworld,  all  nations,  seas, 
And  unfrequented  deserts  where  the  snow  dwells, 
Wakens  the  ruined  monuments,  and  there, 
Where  nothing  but  eternal  death  and  sleep  is, 
Informs  again  the  dead  bones  with  your  virtues." 

In  short,  I  am  inclined  to  think  Fletcher  the 
more  poet  of  the  two.  Where  there  is  pathos  or 
humor,  I  am  in  doubt  whether  it  belongs  to  him 
or  his  partner,  for  I  find  these  qualities  both  in 
the  plays  they  wrote  together  and  in  those  which 
are  wholly  his.  In  the  expression  of  sentiment 
going  far  enough  to  excite  a  painless  aesthetic 
sympathy,  but  stopping  short  of  tragic  passion, 
Beaumont  is  quite  the  equal  of  his  friend.  In  the 
art  of  heightening  and  enriching  such  a  sentiment 
by  poetical  associations  and  pictorial  accessories, 
Fletcher  seems  to  me  the  superior.  Both,  as  I 
have  said,  have  the  art  of  being  pathetic,  and  of 
conceiving  pathetic  situations;  but  neither  of  them 
had  depth  enough  of  character  for  that  tragic  pa- 
thos which  is  too  terrible  for  tears ;  for  those  pas- 
sionate convulsions  when  our  human  nature,  like 
the  sea  in  earthquake,  is  sucked  away  deep  down 
from  its  habitual  shores,  leaving  bare  for  a  mo- 
ment slimy  beds  stirring  with  loathsome  life,  and 
weedy  tangles  before  undreamed  of,  and  instantly 
hidden  again  under  the  rush  of  its  reaction. 
Theirs  are  no  sudden  revelations,  flashes  out  of  the 
very  tempest  itself,  and  born  of  its  own  collisions ; 
but  much  rather  a  melancholy  Ovidian  grace  like 
that  of  the  Heroic  Epistles,  conscious  of  itself,  yet 


BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  103 

not  so  conscious  as  to  beget  distrust  and  make  us 
feel  as  if  we  had  been  cheated  of  our  tenderness. 
If  they  ope  the  sacred  source  of  sympathetic  tears, 
it  is  not  without  due  warning  and  ceremonious 
preparation.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  their 
sentiment  is  not  real,  because  it  is  pensive  and 
not  passionate.  It  is  real,  but  it  is  never  heart- 
rending. I  say  it  all  in  saying  that  their  region 
is  that  of  fancy.  Fancy  and  imagination  may  be 
of  one  substance,  as  the  northern  lights  and  light- 
ning are  supposed  to  be;  but  the  one  plays  and 
flickers  in  harmless  flashes  and  streamers  over 
the  vault  of  the  brain,  the  other  condenses  all  its 
thought-executing  fires  into  a  single  stab  of  flame. 
And  so  of  their  humor.  It  is  playful,  intellectual, 
elaborate,  like  that  of  Charles  Lamb  when  he 
trifles  with  it,  pleasing  itself  with  artificial  dislo- 
cations of  thought,  and  never  glancing  at  those 
essential  incongruities  in  the  nature  of  things  at 
sight  of  which  humor  shakes  its  bells,  and  mocks 
that  it  may  not  shudder. 

Their  comedies  are  amusing,  and  one  of  them, 
"Wit  without  Money,"  is  excellent,  with  some 
scenes  of  joyous  fun  in  it  that  are  very  cheer- 
ing. The  fourth  scene  of  the  third  act  is  a  master- 
piece of  fanciful  extravagance.  This  is  probably 
Fletcher's.  The  Rev.  W.  Cartwright  preferred 
Fletcher's  wit  to  Shakespeare's  :  — 

"Shakespeare  to  tliee  was  dull :  whose  best  jest  lies 
I'  th'  ladies'  questions  and  the  fools'  replies. 
Nature  was  all  his  art ;  thy  vein  was  free 
As  his,  but  without  his  scurrility." 


104        THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

Posterity  has  taken  leave  to  differ  with  the  Rev. 
W.  Cartwright.  The  conversations  in  Fletcher's 
comedies  are  often  lively,  but  the  wit  is  generally 
a  gentlemanlike  banter;  that  is,  what  was  gentle- 
manlike in  that  day.  Real  wit  keeps ;  real  humor 
is  of  the  same  nature  in  Aristophanes  and  Mark 
Twain ;  but  nothing  grows  mouldy  so  soon  as  mere 
fun,  the  product  of  animal  spirits.  Fletcher  had 
far  more  of  this  than  of  true  humor.  Both  he  and 
Beaumont  were  skilled  in  that  pleasantry  which 
in  good  society  is  the  agreeable  substitute  for  the 
more  trenchant  article.  There  is  an  instance  of 
this  in  Miramont's  commendation  of  Greek  in  the 
"Elder  Brother:"  — 

"  Though  I  can  speak  no  Greek,  I  love  the  sound  on't; 
It  goes  so  thundering  as  it  conjured  devils  ; 
Charles  speaks  it  loftily,  and,  if  thou  wert  a  man, 
Or  had'st  but  ever  heard  of  Homer's  Iliads, 
Hesiod  and  the  Greek  poets,  thou  would 'st  run  mad, 
And  hang  thyself  for  joy  thou  'dst  such  a  gentleman 
To  be  thy  son.     0,  he  has  read  such  things 
To  me !  " 

"  And  do  you  understand  'em,  brother  ?  " 
"  I  tell  thee  no  ;  that 's  not  material  ;  the  sound  's 
Sufficient  to  confirm  an  honest  man." 

The  speech  of  Lucio  in  the  "Woman-hater  " 
has  a  smack  of  Moliere  in  it :  — 

"  Secretary,  fetch  the  gown  I  used  to  read  petitions  in,  and  the 
standish  I  answer  French  letters  with." 

Many  of  the  comedies  are  impersonations  of 
what  were  then  called  humors,  like  the  "Little 
French  Lawyer;"  and  some,  like  the  "Knight  of 
the  Burning  Pestle,"  mere  farces.  Nearly  all 
have  the  merit  of  being  lively  and  amusing,  which, 


BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  105 

to  one  who  has  read  many  comedies,  is  saying  a 
great  deal. 

In  what  I  said  just  now  I  did  not  mean  that 
Fletcher  does  not  sometimes  show  an  almost  tragic 
power,  as  he  constantly  does  tragic  sensibility. 
There  are  glimpses  of  it  in  "Thierry  and  Theodo- 
ret,"  and  in  the  death- scene  of  the  little  Hengo  in 
"Bonduca."  Perhaps  I  should  rather  say  that  he 
can  conceive  a  situation  with  some  true  elements 
of  tragedy,  though  not  of  the  deepest  tragedy,  in 
it;  but  when  he  comes  to  work  it  out,  and  make  it 
visible  to  us  in  words,  he  seems  to  feel  himself  more 
at  home  with  the  pity  than  the  terror  of  it.  His 
pathos  (and  this  is  true  of  Beaumont  also)  is  mixed 
with  a  sweetness  that  grows  cloying.  And  it  is 
always  the  author  who  is  speaking,  and  whom  we 
hear.  At  best  he  rises  only  to  a  simulated  passion, 
and  that  leads  inevitably  to  declamation.  There 
is  no  pang  in  it,  but  rather  the  hazy  softness  of  re- 
membered sorrow.  Lear  on  the  heath,  at  parley 
with  the  elements,  makes  all  our  pettier  griefs  con- 
temptible, and  the  sublime  pathos  of  that  scene 
abides  with  us  almost  like  a  consolation.  It  is  not 
Shakespeare  who  speaks,  but  Sorrow  herself  :  — 

"  I  tax  not  you,  you  elements,  with  unkindness  ; 
I  never  gave  you  kingdom,  called  you  children  ; 
You  owe  me  no  subscription :  then  let  fall 
Your  horrible  pleasure ;  here  I  stand,  your  slave, 
A  poor,  infirm,  weak,  and  despis'd  old  man  :  — 
But  yet  I  call  you  servile  ministers, 
That  have  with  two  pernicious  daughters  join'd 
Your  high-engender' d  battles  'gainst  a  head 
So  old  and  white  as  this." 


106       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

What  confidence  of  simplicity  is  this'!  We  call  it 
Greek,  but  it  is  nature,  and  cosmopolitan  as  she. 
That  white  head  and  Priam's  —  the  one  feebly 
defiant,  the  other  bent  humbly  over  the  murderous 
hand  of  Achilles  —  are  our  sufficing  epitomes  of 
desolate  old  age.  There  is  no  third.  Generally 
pity  for  ourselves  mingles  insensibly  with  our  pity 
for  others,  but  here  —  what  are  we  in  the  awful 
presence  of  these  unexampled  woes  ?  The  sorrows 
of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  personages  have  al- 
most as  much  charm  as  sadness  in  them,  and  we 
think  of  the  poet  more  than  of  the  sufferer.  Yet 
his  emotion  is  genuine,  and  we  feel  it  to  be  so  even 
while  we  feel  also  that  it  leaves  his  mind  free  to 
think  about  it,  and  the  dainty  expression  he  will 
give  to  it.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  appeal  to  this 
self-pity  of  which  I  just  spoke  by  having  the  air 
of  saying,  "How  would  you  feel  in  a  situation 
like  this?"  I  am  not  now  speaking  of  their  poeti- 
cal quality.  That  is  constant  and  unfailing,  espe- 
cially in  Fletcher.  In  judging  them  as  poets,  the 
question  would  be,  not  what  they  said,  but  how 
they  said  it. 

How  early  the  two  poets  came  to  London  is 
uncertain.  They  had  already  made  Ben  Jonson's 
acquaintance  in  1607.  Their  first  joint  play, 
"Philaster,  or  Love  lies  a-bleeding,"  was  pro- 
duced in  1608.  I  suppose  this  play  is  more  gen- 
erally known  than  any  other  of  theirs,  and  the 
characteristic  passages  have  a  charm  that  is  per- 
haps never  found  less  mixed  with  baser  matter  in 
any  other  of  the  plays  which  make  up  the  collec- 


BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  107 

tion  known  as  the  Works  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
and  they  bear  the  supreme  test  of  being  read  over 
again  many  times  without  loss  of  freshness.  Phi- 
laster is  son  and  heir  to  a  King  of  Sicily,  but 
robbed  of  his  rights  by  the  King  of  Calabria. 
This  King  has  a  daughter,  Arethusa,  secretly  in 
love  with  Philaster,  as  he  with  her,  but  destined 
by  her  father  to  marry  Pharamond,  a  Spanish 
Prince.  Euphrasia,  daughter  of  Dion,  an  honest 
courtier,  is  also  in  love  with  Philaster,  and  has 
entered  his  service  disguised  as  a  page,  under  the 
name  of  Bellario.  Arethusa  makes  her  love 
known  to  Philaster,  who,  in  order  that  they  may 
have  readier  means  of  communicating  with  each 
other,  transfers  Bellario  to  her.  Thyra,  a  very 
odious  lady  of  the  court,  spreads  a  report  that 
Arethusa  and  her  handsome  page  have  been  too 
intimate.  Philaster  believes  this  slander,  and  this 
leads  to  many  complications.  Arethusa  dismisses 
Bellario.  Philaster  refuses  to  take  him  back. 
They  all  meet  in  a  convenient  forest,  where  Phi- 
laster is  about  to  kill  Arethusa  at  her  own  earnest 
entreaty,  when  he  is  prevented  by  a  clown  who  is 
passing.  The  King,  finding  his  daughter  wounded, 
is  furious,  and  orders  instant  search  for  the  assas- 
sin. Bellario  insists  that  he  is  the  criminal.  He 
and  Philaster  are  put  under  arrest ;  the  Princess 
asks  to  be  their  jailer.  The  people  rise  in  insur- 
rection, and  rescue  him.  It  then  turns  out  that 
he  and  Arethusa  have  been  quietly  married.  Of 
course  the  play  turns  out  with  the  discovery  of 
Bellario's  sex  and  the  King's  consent  to  every- 
thing. 


108      THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

I  have  said  that  it  is  hazardous  to  attempt  divid- 
ing the  work  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  where  they 
worked  together.  Both,  of  course,  are  to  blame 
for  what  is  the  great  blot  on  the  play,  —  Philaster's 
ready  belief,  I  might  well  say  eager  belief,  in  the 
guilt  of  the  Princess.  One  of  his  speeches  is  posi- 
tively monstrous  in  infamous  suggestion.  Cole- 
ridge says :  "  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  always  write 
as  if  virtue  or  goodness  were  a  sort  of  talisman  or 
strange  something  that  might  be  lost  without  the 
least  fault  on  the  part  of  the  owner.  In  short, 
their  chaste  ladies  value  their  chastity  as  a  material 
thing,  not  as  an  act  or  state  of  being;  and  this 
mere  thing  being  imaginary,  no  wonder  that  all 
their  women  are  represented  with  the  minds  of 
strumpets,  except  a  few  irrational  humorists.  .  .  . 
Hence  the  frightful  contrast  between  their  women 
(even  those  who  are  meant  to  be  virtuous)  and 
Shakespeare's."  There  is  some  truth  in  this,  but 
it  is  extravagant.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  have 
drawn  pure  women.  Both  Bellario  and  Arethusa 
are  so.  So  is  Aspatia.  They  had  coarse  and  even 
animal  notions  of  women,  it  is  true,  but  we  must, 
in  judging  what  they  meant  their  women  to  be, 
never  forget  that  coarseness  of  phrase  is  not  always 
coarseness  of  thought.  Women  were  allowed  then 
to  talk  about  things  and  to  use  words  now  forbid- 
den outside  the  slums.  Decency  changes  its  terms, 
though  not  its  nature,  from  one  age  to  another. 
This  is  a  partial  excuse  for  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
but  they  sin  against  that  decorum  of  the  intellect 
and  conscience  which  is  the  same  in  all  ages.  In 


BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  109 

"  Women  Pleased  "  Claudio  disguises  himself,  and 
makes  love  to  his  married  sister  Isabella  in  order 
to  test  her  chastity. 

The  question  as  to  the  authorship  of  "The  Two 
Noble  Kinsmen"  has  an  interest  perhaps  even 
greater  than  that  concerning  the  shares  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher  respectively  in  the  plays  they 
wrote  together,  because  in  this  case  a  part  is  at- 
tributed to  Shakespeare.  "The  Two  Noble  Kins- 
men "  was  first  published  in  1634,  and  ascribed 
on  the  title-page  to  "the  memorable  worthies  of 
their  time,  Mr.  John  F.  and  Mr.  W.  S."  That 
Fletcher's  name  should  have  been  put  first  is  not 
surprising,  if  we  remember  his  great  popularity. 
He  seems  for  a  time  to  have  been  more  fashionable 
than  Shakespeare,  especially  with  the  young  bloods 
fresh  from  the  University  and  of  the  Inns  of  Court. 
They  appear  to  have  thought  that  he  knew  the 
world,  in  their  limited  understanding  of  the  word, 
better  than  his  great  predecessor.  The  priority  of 
name  on  the  title-page,  if  not  due  to  this,  probably 
indicated  that  the  greater  part  of  the  play  was 
from  the  hand  of  Fletcher.  Opinion  has  been 
divided,  with  a  leaning  on  the  part  of  the  weigh- 
tier judges  towards  giving  a  greater  or  less  share 
to  Shakespeare.  I  think  the  verdict  must  be  the 
Scottish  one  of  "not  proven."  On  the  one  hand, 
the  play  could  not  have  been  written  earlier  than 
1608,  and  it  seems  extremely  improbable  that 
Shakespeare,  then  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  and 
in  all  the  splendid  maturity  of  his  powers  and  of 
his  mastery  over  them,  should  have  become  the 


110      THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

junior  partner  of  a  younger  man.  Nor  can  he  be 
supposed  to  have  made  the  work  over  and  adapted 
it  to  the  stage,  for  he  appears  to  have  abandoned 
that  kind  of  work  long  before.  But  we  cannot 
suppose  the  play  to  be  so  early  as  1608,  for  the 
parts  admitted  on  all  hands  to  be  Fletcher's  are  in 
his  maturer  manner.  Yet  there  are  some  passages 
which  seem  to  be  above  his  reach,  and  might  lead 
us  to  suppose  Fletcher  to  have  deliberately  imitated 
Shakespeare's  manner;  but  that  he  never  does, 
though  indebted  to  him  for  many  suggestions. 
There  is  one  speech  in  the  play  which  is  certainly 
very  like  Shakespeare's  in  the  way  it  grows,  and 
beginning  with  a  series  of  noble  images,  deepens 
into  philosophic  thought  at  the  close.  And  yet  I 
am  not  altogether  convinced,  for  Fletcher  could 
heighten  his  style  when  he  thought  fit,  and  when 
the  subject  fully  inspired  him. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  undoubtedly  owed  a 
part  of  their  immediate  renown  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  looked  upon  as  gentlemen  and  scholars. 
Not  that  they  put  on  airs  of  gentility,  as  their 
disciple  Ford  was  fond  of  doing  a  little  later,  and 
as  Horace  Walpole,  Byron,  and  even  Landor  did. 
They  frankly  gave  their  address  in  Grub  Street, 
so  far  as  we  know.  But  they  certainly  seem  to 
have  been  set  up,  as  being  artists  and  men  of  the 
world,  not  perhaps  as  rivals  of  Shakespeare,  but 
in  favorable  comparison  with  one  who  was  sup- 
posed to  owe  everything  to  nature.  I  believe  that 
Pope,  in  the  preface  to  his  edition  of  Shakespeare, 
was  the  first  to  express  doubts  about  the  wisdom 


BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  111 

of  accepting  too  literally  what  Ben  Jonson  says  of 
his  "little  Latin  and  less  Greek."  However  that 
may  be,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  Shakespeare 
had  more  learning  even,  not  to  say  knowledge, 
than  is  commonly  allowed  him,  it  is  singular  that 
the  man  whose  works  show  him  to  have  meditated 
deeply  on  whatever  interests  human  thought,  should 
have  been  supposed  never  to  have  given  his  mind 
to  the  processes  of  his  own  craft.  But  this  com- 
parison of  him  with  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  sug- 
gests one  remark  of  some  interest,  namely,  that 
not  only  are  his  works  by  far  more  cleanly  in 
thought  and  phrase  than  those  of  any  of  his  im- 
portant contemporaries,  except  Marlowe,  not  only 
are  his  men  more  manly  and  his  women  more  wo- 
manly than  theirs,  but  that  his  types  also  of  gen- 
tlemen and  ladies  are  altogether  beyond  any  they 
seem  to  have  been  capable  of  conceiving. 

Of  the  later  dramatists,  I  think  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  rank  next  to  Shakespeare  in  the  amount 
of  pleasure  they  give,  though  not  in  the  quality  of 
it,  and  in  fanciful  charm  of  expression.  In  spite 
of  all  their  coarseness,  there  is  a  delicacy,  a  sen- 
sibility, an  air  of  romance,  and  above  all  a  grace, 
in  their  best  work  that  make  them  forever  attrac- 
tive to  the  young,  and  to  all  those  who  have 
learned  to  grow  old  amiably.  Imagination,  as 
Shakespeare  teaches  us  to  know  it,  we  can  hardly 
allow  them,  but  they  are  the  absolute  lords  of 
some  of  the  fairest  provinces  in  the  domain  of 
fancy.  Their  poetry  is  genuine,  spontaneous,  and 
at  first  hand.  As  I  turn  over  the  leaves  of  an 


112       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

edition  which  I  read  forty-five  years  ago,  and  see, 
by  the  passages  underscored,  how  much  I  enjoyed, 
and  remember  with  whom,  so  many  happy  memo- 
ries revive,  so  many  vanished  faces  lean  over  the 
volume  with  me,  that  I  am  prone  to  suspect  my- 
self of  yielding  to  an  enchantment  that  is  not  in 
the  book  itself.  But  no,  I  read  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  through  again  last  autumn,  and  the  eleven 
volumes  of  Dyce's  edition  show  even  more  pencil 
marks  than  the  two  of  Darley  had  gathered  in  re- 
peated readings.  The  delight  they  give,  the  gay- 
ety  they  inspire,  are  all  their  own.  Perhaps  one 
cause  of  this  is  their  lavishness,  their  lightsome 
ease,  their  happy  confidence  in  resources  that 
never  failed  them.  Their  minds  work  without 
that  reluctant  break  which  pains  us  in  most  of  the 
later  dramatists.  They  had  that  pleasure  in  writ- 
ing which  gives  pleasure  in  reading,  and  deserve 
our  gratitude  because  they  promote  cheerfulness, 
or,  even  when  gravest,  a  pensive  melancholy  that, 
if  it  does  not  play  with  sadness,  never  takes  it  too 
seriously. 


VI 
MASSINGER  AND  FOKD 

PHILIP  MASSINGER  was  born  in  1584,  the  son 
of  Arthur  Massinger,  a  gentleman  who  held  some 
position  of  trust  in  the  household  of  Henry,  Earl 
of  Pembroke,  who  married  the  sister  of  Sir  Philip 
Sidney.  It  was  for  her  that  the  "Arcadia"  was 
written.  And  for  her  Ben  Jonson  wrote  the  fa- 
mous epitaph :  — 

"  Underneath  this  sable  hearse 
Lies  the  subject  of  all  verse. 
Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother. 
Death  !  ere  thou  hast  slain  another, 
Learn'd  and  fair  and  good  as  she, 
Time  shall  throw  a  dart  at  thee." 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  think  that  Massinger 's 
boyhood  had  been  spent  in  the  pure  atmosphere 
that  would  have  surrounded  such  a  woman,  but  it 
should  seem  that  he  could  not  have  been  brought 
up  in  her  household.  Otherwise  it  is  hard  to  un- 
derstand why,  in  dedicating  his  "Bondman"  to 
Philip,  Earl  of  Montgomery,  one  of  her  sons,  he 
should  say,  "However,  I  could  never  arrive  at  the 
happiness  to  be  made  known  to  your  lordship,  yet 
a  desire,  born  with  me,  to  make  a  tender  of  all 
duties  and  service  to  the  noble  family  of  the  Her- 
berts descended  to  me  as  an  inheritance  from  my 
dead  father,  Arthur  Massinger."  All  that  we 


114       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

know  of  his  early  life  is  that  he  entered  a  com- 
moner at  St.  Alban's  Hall,  Oxford,  in  1602.  At 
the  University  he  remained  four  years,  but  left 
it  without  taking  a  degree. 

From  the  year  1606,  until  his  name  appears  in 
an  undated  document  which  the  late  Mr.  John 
Payne  Collier  decides  to  be  not  later  than  1614,  we 
know  nothing  of  him.  This  document  is  so  illus- 
trative of  the  haphazard  lives  of  most  of  the  dra- 
matists and  actors  of  the  time  as  to  be  worth  read- 
ing. It  was  written  by  Nathaniel  Field,  the  actor 
who  played  the  part  of  Bussy  d'Ambois  in  Chap- 
man's play  of  that  name,  and  who  afterwards  be- 
came prosperous  and  one  of  the  shareholders  in  the 
Globe  Theatre.  Here  it  is :  — 

"  To  our  most  loving  friend,  Mr.  Philip  Hinchlow, 
Esq.,  These: 

"MB.  HINCHLOW,  —  You  understand  our  unfortu- 
nate extremity,  and  I  do  not  think  you  so  void  of 
Christianity,  but  you  would  throw  so  much  money  into 
the  Thames  as  we  request  now  of  you  rather  than  en- 
danger so  many  innocent  lives.  You  know  there  is  X£. 
more  at  least  to  be  received  of  you  for  the  play.  We  de- 
sire you  to  lend  us  ~Vl.  of  that,  which  shall  be  allowed  to 
you,  without  which  we  cannot  be  bailed,  nor  I  play  any 
more  till  this  be  despatched.  It  will  lose  you  XX£.  ere 
the  end  of  the  next  week,  besides  the  hindrance  of  the 
next  new  play.  Pray,  sir,  consider  our  cases  with  hu- 
manity, and  now  give  us  cause  to  acknowledge  you  our 
true  friend  in  time  of  need.  We  have  entreated  Mr. 
Davison  to  deliver  this  note,  as  well  to  witness  your  love 
as  our  promises  and  always  acknowledgment  to  be  your 
most  thankful  and  loving  friend,  NAT  FIELD." 


MASSINGER   AND  FORD  115 

Under  this  is  written :  — 

"  The  money  shall  be  abated  out  of  the  money  [that] 
remains  for  the  play  of  Mr.  Fletcher  and  ours. 

ROB  DABORNE." 

"I  have  always  found  you  a  true  loving  friend  to  me, 
and,  in  so  small  a  suit,  it  being  honest,  I  hope  you  will 
not  fail  us.  PHILIP  MASSINGER." 

The  endorsement  on  this  appeal  shows  that  Hinch- 
low  sent  the  money.  No  doubt  Field  was  selected 
to  write  it  as  the  person  most  necessary  to  Hinch- 
low,  who  could  much  more  easily  get  along  with- 
out a  new  play  than  without  a  popular  actor.  It 
is  plain  from  the  document  itself  that  the  signers 
of  it  were  all  under  arrest,  probably  for  some  tav- 
ern bill,  or  it  would  not  otherwise  be  easy  to  ac- 
count for  their  being  involved  in  a  common  calam- 
ity. Davison  was  doubtless  released  as  being  the 
least  valuable.  It  is  amusing  to  see  how  Hinch- 
low's  humanity  and  Christianity  are  briefly  ap- 
pealed to  first  as  a  matter  of  courtesy,  and  how 
the  real  arguments  are  addressed  to  his  self-inter- 
est as  more  likely  to  prevail.  Massinger's  words 
are  of  some  value  as  showing  that  he  had  probably 
for  some  time  been  connected  with  the  stage. 

There  are  two  other  allusions  to  Massinger  in 
the  registers  of  Sir  Henry  Herbert,  Master  of  the 
Revels.  Both  are  to  plays  of  his  now  lost.  Of 
one  of  them  even  the  name  has  not  survived.  On 
the  llth  of  January,  1631,  Sir  Henry  refused  to 
license  this  nameless  performance  "because  it  did 
contain  dangerous  matter  —  as  the  deposing  of 


116       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

Sebastian  King  of  Portugal  by  Philip  II.,  there 
being  peace  sworn  beween  England  and  Spain." 
He  adds,  amusingly  enough,  "I  had  my  fee  not- 
withstanding, which  belongs  to  me  for  reading  it 
over,  and  ought  always  to  be  brought  with  a  book." 
Again,  in  1638,  at  the  time  of  the  dispute  between 
Charles  I.  and  his  subjects  about  ship-money,  Sir 
Henry  quotes  from  a  manuscript  play  of  Massinger 
submitted  to  him  for  censure  the  following  pas- 
sage :  — 

"  Monies  ?     We  '11  raise  supplies  which  way  we  please, 
And  force  you  to  subscribe  to  blanks  in  which 
We  '11  mulct  you  as  we  shall  think  fit.     The  Csesars 
In  Rome  were  wise,  acknowledging  no  laws 
But  what  their  swords  did  ratify,  the  wives 
And  daughters  of  the  senators  bowing  to 
Their  wills  as  deities,"  etc. 

Sir  Henry  then  adds,  "This  is  a  piece  taken  out 
of  Philip  Massinger 's  play  called  'The  King  and 
the  Subject,'  and  entered  here  forever  to  be  re- 
membered by  my  son  and  those  that  cast  their  eyes 
upon  it,  in  honor  of  King  Charles,  my  master, 
who,  reading  the  play  over  at  Newmarket,  set  his 
mark  upon  the  place  with  his  own  hand  and  in 
these  words:  'This  is  too  insolent,  and  to  be 
changed. '  Note  that  the  poet  makes  it  the  speech 
of  Don  Pedro,  King  of  Spain,  and  spoken  to  his 
subjects."  Coleridge  rather  hastily  calls  Massin- 
ger a  democrat.  But  I  find  no  evidence  of  it  in 
his  plays.  He  certainly  was  no  advocate  of  the 
slavish  doctrine  of  passive  obedience,  or  of  what 
Pope  calls  the  right  divine  of  kings  to  govern 
wrong,  as  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  often  were,  but 


MASSINGER  AND  FORD  117 

he  could  not  have  been  a  democrat  without  being 
an  anachronism,  and  that  no  man  can  be. 

The  license  of  the  stage  at  that  time  went  much 
farther  than  this;  nay,  it  was  as  great  as  it  ever 
was  at  Athens.  From  a  letter  of  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil to  certain  justices  of  the  peace  of  the  County  of 
Middlesex  in  1601,  we  learn  that  "certain  players 
who  use  to  recite  their  plays  at  the  Curtain  in 
Moorfields  do  represent  upon  the  stage  in  their 
interludes  the  persons  of  some  gentlemen  of  good 
desert  and  quality,  that  are  yet  alive,  under  ob- 
scure manner,  but  yet  in  such  sort  as  all  the  hear- 
ers may  take  notice  both  of  the  matter  and  the 
persons  that  are  meant  thereby."  And  again  it 
appears  that  in  1605  the  Corporation  of  the  City 
of  London  memorialized  the  Privy  Council,  in- 
forming them  that  "Kemp  Armyn  and  other  play- 
ers at  the  Black  Friars  have  again  not  forborne  to 
bring  upon  their  stage  one  or  more  of  the  Worship- 
ful Company  of  Aldermen,  to  their  great  scandal 
and  the  lessening  of  their  authority,"  and  praying 
that  "order  may  be  taken  to  remedy  the  abuse, 
either  by  putting  down  or  removing  the  said 
Theatre."  Aristophanes  brought  Socrates  and 
Euripides  upon  the  stage,  —  but  neither  of  these 
was  an  Alderman. 

Massinger  committed  no  offences  of  this  kind, 
unless  Sir  Giles  Overreach  be  meant  for  some  spe- 
cial usurer  whom  he  wished  to  make  hateful,  of 
which  there  is  no  evidence.  He  does  indeed  ex- 
press his  own  opinions,  his  likes  and  dislikes,  very 
freely.  Nor  were  these  such  as  he  need  be 


118       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

ashamed  to  avow.  It  may  be  inferred,  on  the 
strength  of  some  of  the  sentiments  put  by  him  into 
the  mouths  of  his  characters,  that  he  would  have 
sympathized  rather  with  Hampden  and  Pym  than 
with  Charles  I.  But  nothing  more  than  this  can 
be  conjectured  as  to  his  probable  politics.  He 
disliked  cruel  creditors,  grinders  of  the  poor,  en- 
closers  of  commons,  and  forestallers,  as  they  were 
called;  for  corners  in  wheat  and  other  commodi- 
ties were  not  unknown  to  our  ancestors,  nor  did 
they  think  better  of  the  men  that  made  them  than 
we.  There  is  a  curious  passage  in  his  play  of 
"The  Guardian"  which  shows  that  his  way  of 
thinking  on  some  points  was  not  unlike  Mr.  Rus- 
kin's.  Severino,  who  has  been  outlawed,  draws  up 
a  code  of  laws  for  the  banditti  of  whom  he  has 
become  captain,  defining  who  might  be  properly 
plundered  and  who  not.  Among  those  belonging 
to  the  former  class  he  places  the 

"  Builders  of  iron-mills  that  grub  up  forests 
With  timber  trees  for  shipping  ;  " 

and  in  the  latter,  scholars,  soldiers,  rack-rented 
farmers,  needy  market  folks,  sweaty  laborers,  car- 
riers, and  women.  All  that  we  can  fairly  say  is 
that  he  was  a  man  of  large  and  humane  sympa- 
thies. 

But  though  Massinger  did  not,  so  far  as  we 
know,  indulge  in  as  great  licenses  of  scenic  satire 
as  some  of  his  contemporaries,  there  is  in  his 
"Roman  Actor"  so  spirited  a  defence  of  the  free- 
dom of  the  stage  and  of  its  usefulness  as  a  guar- 


MASSINGER  AND  FORD  119 

dian  and  reformer  of   morals   that   I  will  quote 
it:  — 

"  Aretinus.  Are  you  on  the  stage, 

You  talk  so  boldly  ? 

Paris.  The  whole  world  being  one, 

This  place  is  not  exempted  ;  and  I  am 
So  confident  in  the  justice  of  our  cause 
That  I  could  wish  Caesar,  in  whose  great  name 
All  kings  are  comprehended,  sat  as  judge 
To  hear  our  plea,  and  then  determine  of  us. 
If,  to  express  a  man  sold  to  his  lusts, 
Wasting  the  treasure  of  his  time  and  fortunes 
In  wanton  dalliance,  and  to  what  sad  end 
A  -wretch  that 's  so  given  over  does  arrive  at  ; 
Deterring  careless  youth,  by  his  example, 
From  such  licentious  courses  ;  laying  open 
The  snares  of  bawds,  and  the  consuming  arts 
Of  prodigal  strumpets,  can  deserve  reproof, 
Why  are  not  all  your  golden  principles, 
Writ  down  by  grave  philosophers  to  instruct  ua 
To  choose  fair  virtue  for  our  guide,  not  pleasure, 
Condemned  unto  the  fire  ? 

Sura.  There 's  spirit  in  this. 

Paris.     Or  if  desire  of  honor  was  the  base 
On  which  the  building  of  the  Roman  Empire 
Was  raised  up  to  this  height ;  if,  to  inflame 
The  noble  youth  with  an  ambitious  heat 
T'  endure  the  frosts  of  danger,  nay,  of  death, 
To  be  thought  worthy  the  triumphal  wreath 
By  glorious  undertakings,  may  deserve 
Reward  or  favor  from  the  commonwealth, 
Actors  may  put  in  for  as  large  a  share 
As  all  the  sects  of  the  philosophers. 
They  with  cold  precepts  (perhaps  seldom  read) 
Deliver  what  an  honorable  thing 
The  active  virtue  is  ;  but  does  that  fire 
The  blood,  or  swell  the  veins  with  emulation 
To  be  both  good  and  great,  equal  to  that 
Which  is  presented  on  our  theatres  ? 
Let  a  good  actor,  in  a  lofty  scene, 
Shew  great  Alcides  honour'd  in  the  sweat     . 


120      THE  OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

Of  his  twelve  labours  ;  or  a  bold  Camillas 
Forbidding  Rome  to  be  redeem' d  with  gold 
From  the  insulting  Gauls ;  or  Scipio, 
After  his  victories,  imposing  tribute 
On  conquer'd  Carthage  ;  if  done  to  the  life, 
As  if  they  saw  their  dangers,  and  their  glories, 
And  did  partake  with  them  in  their  rewards, 
All  that  have  any  spark  of  Roman  in  them, 
The  slothful  arts  laid  by,  contend  to  be 
Like  those  they  see  presented. 

Rusticus.  He  has  put 

The  consuls  to  their  whisper. 

Paris.  But 't  is  urged 

That  we  corrupt  youth,  and  traduce  superiors. 
When  do  we  bring  a  vice  upon  the  stage 
That  does  go  off  unpunish'd  ?     Do  we  teach, 
By  the  success  of  wicked  undertakings, 
Others  to  tread  in  their  forbidden  steps  ? 
We  shew  no  arts  of  Lydian  paiiderism, 
Corinthian  poisons,  Persian  flatteries, 
But  mulcted  so  in  the  conclusion,  that 
Even  those  spectators  that  were  so  inclined, 
Go  home  changed  men.     And,  for  traducing  such 
That  are  above  us,  publishing  to  the  world 
Their  secret  crimes,  we  are  as  innocent 
As  such  as  are  born  dumb.     When  we  present 
An  heir  that  does  conspire  against  the  life 
Of  his  dear  parent,  numbering  every  hour 
He  lives  as  tedious  to  him,  if  there  be 
Among  the  auditors  one  whose  conscience  tells  him 
He  is  of  the  same  mould,  —  WE  CANNOT  HELP  IT. 
Or,  bringing  on  the  stage  a  loose  adulteress, 
That  does  maintain  the  riotous  expense 
Of  him  that  feeds  her  greedy  lust,  yet  suffers 
The  lawful  pledges  of  a  former  bed 
To  starve  the  while  for  hunger ;  if  a  matron, 
However  great  in  fortune,  birth,  or  titles, 
Guilty  of  such  a  foul,  unnatural  sin, 
Cry  out,  'T  is  writ  for  me, —  WE  CANNOT  HELP  IT. 
Or,  when  a  covetous  man  's  express' d,  whose  wealth 
Arithmetic  cannot  number,  and  whose  lordships 


MAS  SINGER  AND  FORD  121 

A  falcon  in  one  day  cannot  fly  over, 

Yet  he  so  sordid  in  his  mind,  so  griping, 

As  not  to  afford  himself  the  necessaries 

To  maintain  life  ;  if  a  patrician 

(Though  honour'd  with  a  consulship)  find  himself 

Touch'd  to  the  quick  in  this,  —  WE  CANNOT  HELP  IT. 

Or,  when  we  show  a  judge  that  is  corrupt, 

And  will  give  up  his  sentence  as  he  favours 

The  person,  not  the  cause,  saving  the  guilty, 

If  of  his  faction,  and  as  oft  condemning 

The  innocent,  out  of  particular  spleen  ; 

If  any  in  this  reverend  assembly, 

Nay,  even  yourself,  my  lord,  that  are  the  image 

Of  absent  Caesar,  feel  something  in  your  bosom 

That  puts  you  in  remembrance  of  things  past, 

Or  things  intended,  —  'T  is  NOT  IN  us  TO  HELP  IT. 

I  have  said,  my  lord  :  and  now,  as  you  find  cause, 

Or  censure  us,  or  free  us  with  applause." 

We  know  nothing  else  of  Massinger's  personal 
history  beyond  what  has  been  told,  except  that  the 
parish  register  of  St.  Saviour's  contains  this  en- 
try: "March  20,  1639-40,  buried  Philip  Massin- 
ger,  a  stranger."  A  pathos  has  been  felt  by  some 
in  the  words  "a  stranger,"  as  if  they  implied  pov- 
erty and  desertion.  But  they  merely  meant  that 
Massinger  did  not  belong  to  that  parish.  John 
Aubrey  is  spoken  of  in  the  same  way  in  the  regis- 
ter of  St.  Mary  Magdalen  at  Oxford,  and  for  the 
same  reason. 

Massinger  wrote  thirty-seven  plays,  of  which 
only  eighteen  have  come  down  to  us.  The  name 
of  one  of  these  non-extant  plays,  "The  Noble 
Choice,"  gives  a  keen  pang  to  a  lover  of  the  poet, 
for  it  seems  to  indicate  a  subject  peculiarly  fitted 
to  bring  out  his  best  qualities  as  a  dramatist. 


122       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

Four  of  the  lost  plays  were  used  to  kindle  fires 
by  that  servant  of  Mr.  Warburton  who  made  such 
tragic  havoc  in  our  earlier  dramatic  literature,  a 
vulgar  Omar  without  the  pious  motive  of  the  Com- 
mander of  the  Faithful,  if,  as  is  very  doubtful,  he 
did  indeed  order  the  burning  of  the  Alexandrian 
Library. 

To  me  Massinger  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
as  well  as  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  the  old 
dramatists,  not  so  much  for  his  passion  or  power, 
though  at  times  he  reaches  both,  as  for  the  love  he 
shows  for  those  things  that  are  lovely  and  of  good 
report  in  human  nature,  for  his  sympathy  with 
what  is  generous  and  high-minded  and  honorable, 
and  for  his  equable  flow  of  a  good  every-day  kind 
of  poetry  with  few  rapids  or  cataracts,  but  sin- 
gularly soothing  and  companionable.  The  Latin 
adjective  for  gentleman,  generosus,  fits  him  aptly. 
His  plots  are  generally  excellent;  his  versification 
masterly,  with  skilful  breaks  and  pauses,  capable 
of  every  needful  variety  of  emotion ;  and  his  dia- 
logue easy,  natural,  and  sprightly,  subsiding  in 
the  proper  places  to  a  refreshing  conversational 
tone.  This  graceful  art  was  one  seldom  learned 
by  any  of  those  who  may  be  fairly  put  in  compari- 
son with  him.  Even  when  it  has  put  on  the  sock, 
their  blank  verse  cannot  forget  the  stride  and  strut 
it  had  caught  of  the  cothurnus.  Massinger  never 
mouths  or  rants,  because  he  seems  never  to  have 
written  merely  to  fill  up  an  empty  space.  He  is 
therefore  never  bombastic,  for  bombast  gets  its 
metaphorical  name  from  its  original  physical  use 


MASSINGER  AND  FORD  123 

as  padding.  Indeed,  there  are  very  few  empty 
spaces  in  his  works.  His  plays  are  interesting 
alike  from  their  story  and  the  way  it  is  told.  I 
doubt  if  there  are  so  many  salient  short  passages, 
striking  images,  or  pregnant  sayings  to  be  found 
in  his  works  as  may  be  found  in  those  of  very  in- 
ferior men.  But  we  feel  always  that  we  are  in 
the  company  of  a  serious  and  thoughtful  man,  if 
not  in  that  of  a  great  thinker.  Great  thinkers, 
indeed,  are  seldom  so  entertaining  as  he.  If  he 
does  not  tax  the  mind  of  his  reader,  nor  call  out  all 
its  forces  with  profound  problems  of  psychology, 
he  is  infinitely  suggestive  of  not  unprofitable  re- 
flection, and  of  agreeable  nor  altogether  purpose- 
less meditation.  His  is  "a  world  whose  course 
is  equable,"  where  "calm  pleasures  abide,"  if  no 
"majestic  pains."  I  never  could  understand 
Lamb's  putting  Middleton  and  Rowley  above  him, 
unless,  perhaps,  because  he  was  less  at  home  on 
the  humbler  levels  of  humanity,  less  genial  than 
they,  or,  at  least,  than  Rowley.  But  there  were 
no  proper  esthetic  grounds  of  comparison,  if  I  am 
right  in  thinking,  as  I  do,  that  he  differed  from 
them  in  kind,  and  that  his  kind  was  the  higher. 

In  quoting  from  Wordsworth's  "Laodamia" 
just  now,  I  stopped  short  of  the  word  "pure,"  and 
said  only  that  Massinger's  world  was  "equable." 
I  did  this  because  in  some  of  his  lower  characters 
there  is  a  coarseness,  nay,  a  foulness,  of  thought 
and  sometimes  of  phrase  for  which  I  find  it  hard 
to  account.  There  is  nothing  in  it  that  could  pos- 
sibly corrupt  the  imagination,  for  it  is  altogether 


124       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

repulsive.  In  this  case,  as  in  Chapman's,  I  should 
say  that  it  indicated  more  ignorance  of  what  is  de- 
basingly  called  Life  than  knowledge  of  it.  With 
all  this  he  gives  frequent  evidence  of  a  higher  con- 
ception of  love  than  was  then  common.  The  re- 
gion in  which  his  mind  seems  most  naturally  to 
dwell  is  one  of  honor,  courage,  devotion,  and  ethe- 
real sentiment, 

I  cannot  help  asking  myself,  did  such  a  world 
ever  exist?  Perhaps  not;  yet  one  is  inclined  to 
say  that  it  is  such  a  world  as  might  exist,  and,  if 
possible,  ought  to  exist.  It  is  a  world  of  noble 
purpose  not  always  inadequately  fulfilled ;  a  world 
whose  terms  are  easily  accepted  by  the  intellect  as 
well  as  by  the  imagination.  By  this  I  mean  that 
there  is  nothing  violently  improbable  in  it.  Some 
men,  and,  I  believe,  more  women,  live  habitually 
in  such  a  world  when  they  commune  with  their  own 
minds.  It  is  a  world  which  we  visit  in  thought 
as  we  go  abroad  to  renew  and  invigorate  the  ideal 
part  of  us.  The  canopy  of  its  heaven  is  wide 
enough  to  stretch  over  Boston  also.  I  heard,  the 
other  day,  the  story  of  a  Boston  merchant  which 
convinces  me  of  it.  The  late  Mr.  Samuel  Apple- 
ton  was  anxious  about  a  ship  of  his  which  was 
overdue,  and  was  not  insured.  Every  day  added 
to  his  anxiety,  till  at  last  he  began  to  be  more 
troubled  about  that  than  about  his  ship.  "Is  it 
possible,"  he  said  to  himself,  "that  I  am  getting 
to  love  money  for  itself,  and  not  for  its  noble 
uses?"  He  added  together  the  value  of  the  ship 
and  the  estimated  profit  on  her  cargo,  found  it  to 


MASSINGER   AND  FORD  125 

be  140,000,  and  at  once  devoted  that  amount  to 
charities  in  which  he  was  interested.  This  kind 
of  thing  may  happen,  and  sometimes  does  happen, 
in  the  actual  world;  it  always  happens  in  the 
world  where  Massinger  lays  his  scene.  That  is 
the  difference,  and  it  is  by  reason  of  this  differ- 
ence that  I  like  to  be  there.  I  move  more  freely 
and  breathe  more  inspiring  air  among  those  en- 
couraging possibilities.  As  I  just  said,  we  find  no 
difficulty  in  reconciling  ourselves  with  its  condi- 
tions. We  find  no  difficulty  even  where  there  is 
an  absolute  disengagement  from  all  responsibility 
to  the  matter-of-fact,  as  in  the  "Arabian  Nights," 
which  I  read  through  again  a  few  years  ago  with 
as  much  pleasure  as  when  a  boy,  perhaps  with 
more.  For  it  appears  to  me  that  it  is  the  business 
of  all  imaginative  literature  to  offer  us  a  sanctuary 
from  the  world  of  the  newspapers,  in  which  we 
have  to  live,  whether  we  will  or  no.  As  in  look- 
ing at  a  picture  we  must  place  ourselves  at  the 
proper  distance  to  harmonize  all  its  particulars  into 
an  effective  whole,  I  am  not  sure  that  life  is  not 
seen  in  a  truer  perspective  when  it  is  seen  in  the 
fairer  prospect  of  an  ideal  remoteness.  Perhaps 
we  must  always  go  a  little  way  back  in  order  to 
get  into  the  land  of  romance,  as  Scott  and  Haw- 
thorne did.  And  yet  it  is  within  us  too.  An  un- 
skilful story-teller  always  raises  our  suspicion  by 
putting  a  foot-note  to  any  improbable  occurrence, 
to  say  "This  is  a  fact,"  and  the  so-called  realist 
raises  doubts  in  my  mind  when  he  assures  me  that 
he,  and  he  alone,  gives  me  the  facts  of  life.  Too 


126       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

often  all  I  can  say  is,  if  these  are  the  facts,  I  don't 
want  them.  The  police  reports  give  me  more  than 
I  care  for  every  day.  But  are  they  the  facts  ?  I 
had  much  rather  believe  them  to  be  the  accidental 
and  transitory  phenomena  of  our  existence  here. 
The  real  and  abiding  facts  are  those  that  are  rec- 
ognized as  such  by  the  soul  when  it  is  in  that  upper 
chamber  of  our  being  which  is  farthest  removed 
from  the  senses,  and  commerces  with  its  truer  self. 
I  very  much  prefer  "King  Lear  "  to  Balzac's  bour- 
geois version  of  it  in  "Le  Pere  Goriot,"  as  I  do 
the  naivete  of  Miranda  to  that  of  Voltaire's  In- 
genu,  and,  when  I  look  about  me  in  the  Fortunate 
Islands  of  the  poet,  would  fain  exclaim  with  her : 

"0!   wonder! 

How  many  goodly  creatures  are  there  here  ! 
How  beauteous  mankind  is  !     0,  brave  new  world, 
That  has  such  people  in  't !  " 

Those  old  poets  had  a  very  lordly  contempt  for 
probability  when  improbability  would  serve  their 
purpose  better.  But  Massinger  taxes  our  credulity 
less  than  most  of  them,  for  his  improbabilities  are 
never  moral;  that  is,  are  never  impossibilities.  I 
do  not  recall  any  of  those  sudden  conversions  in 
his  works  from  baseness  to  loftiness  of  mind,  and 
from  vice  to  virtue,  which  trip  up  all  our  expecta- 
tions so  startlingly  in  many  an  old  play.  As  to 
what  may  be  called  material  improbabilities,  we 
should  remember  that  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago  many  things  were  possible,  with  great  advan- 
tage to  complication  of  plot,  which  are  no  longer 
so.  The  hand  of  an  absolute  prince  could  give 


MASSINGER   AND  FORD  127 

a  very  sudden  impulse  to  the  wheel  of  Fortune, 
whether  to  lift  a  minion  from  the  dust  or  hurl  him 
back  again;  men  might  be  taken  by  Barbary  cor- 
sairs and  sold  for  slaves,  or  turn  Turks,  as  occa- 
sion required.  The  world  was  fuller  of  chances 
and  changes  than  now,  and  the  boundaries  of  the 
possible,  if  not  of  the  probable,  far  wider.  Mas- 
singer  was  discreet  in  the  use  of  these  privileges, 
and  does  not  abuse  them,  as  his  contemporaries 
and  predecessors  so  often  do.  His  is  a  possible 
world,  though  it  be  in  some  ways  the  best  of  all 
possible  worlds.  He  puts  no  strain  upon  our  im- 
aginations. 

As  a  poet  he  is  inferior  to  many  others,  and 
this  follows  inevitably  from  the  admission  we  feel 
bound  to  make  that  good  sense  and  good  feeling 
are  his  leading  qualities  —  yet  ready  to  forget  their 
sobriety  in  the  exhilaration  of  romantic  feeling. 
When  Nature  makes  a  poet,  she  seems  willing  to 
sacrifice  all  other  considerations.  Yet  this  very 
good  sense  of  Massinger's  has  made  him  excel- 
lent as  a  dramatist.  His  "New  Way  to  pay  Old 
Debts"  is  a  very  effective  play,  though  in  the 
reading  far  less  interesting  and  pleasing  than  most 
of  the  others.  Yet  there  are  power  and  passion  in 
it,  even  if  the  power  be  somewhat  melodramatic, 
and  the  passion  of  an  ignoble  type.  In  one  re- 
spect he  was  truly  a  poet  —  his  conceptions  of 
character  were  ideal ;  but  his  diction,  though  full 
of  dignity  and  never  commonplace,  lacks  the 
charm  of  the  inspired  and  inspiring  word,  the  re- 
lief of  the  picturesque  image  that  comes  so  natu- 


128       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

rally  to  the  help  of  Fletcher.  Where  he  is  most 
fanciful,  indeed,  the  influence  of  Fletcher  is  only 
too  apparent  both  in  his  thought  and  diction.  I 
should  praise  him  chiefly  for  the  atmosphere  of 
magnanimity  which  invests  his  finer  scenes,  and 
which  it  is  wholesome  to  breathe.  In  Massinger's 
plays  people  behave  generously,  as  if  that  were  the 
natural  thing  to  do,  and  give  us  a  comfortable 
feeling  that  the  world  is  not  so  bad  a  place,  after 
all,  and  that  perhaps  Schopenhauer  was  right  in 
enduring  for  seventy -two  years  a  life  that  was  n't 
worth  living.  He  impresses  one  as  a  manly  kind 
of  person,  and  the  amount  of  man  in  a  poet, 
though  it  may  not  add  to.  his  purely  poetical  qual- 
ity, adds  much,  I  think,  to  our  pleasure  in  read- 
ing his  works. 

I  have  left  myself  little  space  in  which  to  speak 
of  Ford,  but  it  will  suffice.  In  reading  him  again 
after  a  long  interval,  with  elements  of  wider  com- 
parison, and  provided  with  more  trustworthy  tests, 
I  find  that  the  greater  part  of  what  I  once  took  on 
trust  as  precious  is  really  paste  and  pinchbeck. 
His  plays  seem  to  me  now  to  be  chiefly  remark- 
able for  that  filigree -work  of  sentiment  which  we 
call  sentimentality.  The  word  "alchemy"  once 
had  a  double  meaning.  It  was  used  to  signify  both 
the  process  by  which  lead  could  be  transmuted 
into  gold,  and  the  alloy  of  baser  metal  by  which 
gold  could  be  adulterated  without  losing  so  much 
of  its  specious  semblance  as  to  be  readily  detected. 
The  ring  of  the  true  metal  can  be  partially  imi- 


MASSfNGER  AND  FORD  129 

tated,  and  for  a  while  its  glow,  but  the  counterfeit 
grows  duller  as  the  genuine  grows  brighter  with 
wear.  The  greater  poets  have  found  out  the 
ennobling  secret,  the  lesser  ones  the  trick  of  falsi- 
fication. Ford  seems  to  me  to  have  been  a  master 
in  it.  He  abounds  especially  in  mock  pathos.  I 
remember  when  he  thoroughly  imposed  on  me.  A 
youth,  unacquainted  with  grief  and  its  incommu- 
nicable reserve,  sees  nothing  unnatural  or  indecent 
in  those  expansive  sorrows  precious  only  because 
they  can  be  confided  to  the  first  comer,  and  finds  a 
pleasing  titillation  in  the  fresh-water  tears  with 
which  they  cool  his  eyelids.  But  having  once 
come  to  know  the  jealous  secretiveness  of  real  sor- 
row, we  resent  these  conspiracies  to  waylay  our  sym- 
pathy, —  conspiracies  of  the  opera  plotted  at  the 
top  of  the  lungs.  It  is  joy  that  is  wont  to  over- 
flow, but  grief  shrinks  back  to  its  sources.  I  sus- 
pect the  anguish  that  confides  its  loss  to  the  town- 
crier.  Even  in  that  single  play  of  Ford's  which 
comes  nearest  to  the  true  pathetic,  "The  Broken 
Heart,"  there  is  too  much  apparent  artifice,  and 
Charles  Lamb's  comment  on  its  closing  scene  is 
worth  more  than  all  Ford  ever  wrote.  But  a  critic 
must  look  at  it  minus  Charles  Lamb.  We  may 
read  as  much  of  ourselves  into  a  great  poet  as  we 
will;  we  shall  never  cancel  our  debt  to  him.  In 
the  interests  of  true  literature  we  should  not  honor 
fraudulent  drafts  upon  our  imagination. 

Ford  has  an  air  of  saying  something  without 
ever  saying  it  that  is  peculiarly  distressing  to  a 
man  who  values  his  time.  His  diction  is  hack- 


130       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

neyed  and  commonplace,  and  has  seldom  the  charm 
of  unexpected  felicity,  so  much  a  matter  of  course 
with  the  elder  poets.  Especially  does  his  want 
of  imagination  show  itself  in  his  metaphors.  The 
strong  direct  thrust  of  phrase  which  we  cannot 
parry,  sometimes  because  of  very  artlessness,  is 
never  his. 

Compare,  for  example,  this  passage  with  one  of 
similar  content  from  Shakespeare :  — 

"  Keep  in, 

Bright  angel,  that  severer  breath  to  cool 
The  heat  of  cruelty  which  sways  the  temple 
Of  your  too  stony  breast ;  you  cannot  urge 
One  reason  to  rebuke  my  trembling  plea 
Which  I  have  not,  with  many  nights'  expense, 
Examined  ;  but,  oh  Madam,  still  I  find 
No  physic  strong  to  cure  a  tortured  mind 
But  freedom  from  the  torture  it  sustains." 

Now  hear  Shakespeare :  — 

"  Canst  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased, 
Pluck  from  the  memory  a  rooted  sorrow, 
Raze  out  the  written  troubles  of  the  brain, 
And,  with  some  sweet  oblivious  antidote, 
Cleanse  the  stuff'd  bosom  of  the  perilous  stuff 
Which  weighs  upon  the  heart  ?  " 

Ford  lingers-out  his  heart-breaks  too  much.  He 
recalls  to  my  mind  a  speech  of  Calianax  in  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  "Maid's  Tragedy:"  "You 
have  all  fine  new  tricks  to  grieve.  But  I  ne'er 
knew  any  but  direct  crying."  One  is  tempted  to 
prefer  the  peremptory  way  in  which  the  old  ballad- 
mongers  dealt  with  such  matters :  — 

"  She  turned  her  face  unto  the  wa', 
And  there  her  very  heart  it  brak." 


MAS  SINGER  AND  FORD  131 

I  cannot  bid  you  farewell  without  thanking  you 
for  the  patience  with  which  you  have  followed  me 
to  the  end.  I  may  have  seemed  sometimes  to  be 
talking  to  you  of  things  that  would  weigh  but  as 
thistle-down  in  the  great  business-scales  of  life. 
But  I  have  an  old  opinion,  strengthening  with 
years,  that  it  is  as  important  to  keep  the  soul  alive 
as  the  body:  nay,  that  it  is  the  life  of  the  soul 
which  gives  all  its  value  to  that  of  the  body. 
Poetry  is  a  criticism  of  life  only  in  the  sense  that 
it  furnishes  us  with  the  standard  of  a  more  ideal 
felicity,  of  calmer  pleasures  and  more  majestic 
pains.  I  am  glad  to  see  that  what  the  under- 
standing would  stigmatize  as  useless  is  coming  back 
into  books  written  for  children,  which  at  one  time 
threatened  to  become  more  and  more  drearily  prac- 
tical and  didactic.  The  fairies  are  permitted  once 
more  to  imprint  their  rings  on  the  tender  sward  of 
the  child's  fancy,  and  it  is  the  child's  fancy  that 
often  lives  obscurely  on  to  minister  solace  to  the 
lonelier  and  less  sociable  mind  of  the  man.  Our 
nature  resents  the  closing  up  of  the  windows  on  its 
emotional  and  imaginative  side,  and  revenges  itself 
as  it  can.  I  have  observed  that  many  who  deny 
the  inspiration  of  Scripture  hasten  to  redress  their 
balance  by  giving  a  reverent  credit  to  the  revela- 
tions of  inspired  tables  and  camp-stools.  In  a  last 
analysis  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  to  the  sense  of 
Wonder  that  all  literature  of  the  Fancy  and  of  the 
Imagination  appeals.  I  am  told  that  this  sense  is 
the  survival  in  us  of  some  savage  ancestor  of  the 


132       THE   OLD  ENGLISH  DRAMATISTS 

age  of  flint.  If  so,  I  am  thankful  to  him  for  his 
longevity,  or  his  transmitted  nature,  whichever  it 
may  be.  But  I  have  my  own  suspicion  sometimes 
that  the  true  age  of  flint  is  before,  and  not  behind 
us,  an  age  hardening  itself  more  and  more  to  those 
subtle  influences  which  ransom  our  lives  from  the 
captivity  of  the  actual,  from  that  dungeon  whose 
warder  is  the  Giant  Despair.  Yet  I  am  consoled 
by  thinking  that  the  siege  of  Troy  will  be  remem- 
bered when  those  of  Vicksburg  and  Paris  are  for- 
gotten. One  of  the  old  dramatists,  Thomas  Hey- 
wood,  has,  without  meaning  it,  set  down  for  us  the 
uses  of  the  poets :  — 

' '  They  cover  U3  with  counsel  to  defend  us 
From  storms  without ;  they  polish  us  within 
With  learning,  knowledge,  arts,  and  disciplines  ; 
All  that  is  nought  and  vicious  they  sweep  from  us 
Like  dust  and  cobwebs ;  our  rooms  concealed 
Hang  with  the  costliest  hangings  'bout  the  walls, 
Emblems  and  beauteous  symbols  pictured  round." 


X  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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